


You Broke Him, You Fix Him

by orphan_account



Category: Rick and Morty
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Depression, Drug Abuse, Illnesses, Multi, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Slash, Rape/Non-con Elements, Sexual Violence, every trigger, literally everything
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-23
Updated: 2017-09-25
Packaged: 2019-01-04 07:06:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 21,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12163953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: In which Morty Smith suffers the effect of one too many memory wipes following the events of "Morty's Mind Blowers," and decides to make the same mistake in wanting to know everything, a second time. The difference? There's no Rick to watch over him, as Morty forces himself to confront all of the things he used to run from, and things Rick thought he'd be better off not knowing. "Ignorance is bliss," no longer applies. It'd be enough to break anyone, maybe even the Mortiest Morty - it's enough that even Beth notices.Rick can't remember the last time Beth got this angry over anything, bar him leaving in the first place. Snarling accusingly over her bottle of wine, finger shakily pointing at her father's ashen face, she all but screams."You broke him, you fix him!"





	1. Morty Alone

 

Manipulating Rick Sanchez should be the hardest thing in the universe. He’s the smartest man in the universe – or um, universes _plural,_ so in theory, yeah, it should be hard.  It daunts Morty at first, until he realises he’s already done it successfully at least once. He’d gotten Rick to take Jerry out on a pity adventure, and so long as Morty masks it as gentle concern (and after all, the best lies are told with curdles of truth) – then he can sell it to Rick, and Rick will believe him. It’s that logic which he applies the second time around, but with Beth.

 

He just needs Beth out of the house, it’s easier with Jerry gone now, and Summer is largely independent, but Morty needs to get _in_ to that damn garage, and he needs to be there alone. Without Rick. He needs it the whole day, possibly several – but one is a start. It’s hard to explain why, maybe if Beth wasn’t egotistically mirroring her father and matching his disdain for therapy, he could have worked it out with Dr Wong. This does, after all, seem to be her purview – but no. Once again, it seems like Beth is putting her needs and her ego before the family as a whole because she knows _exactly_ what Rick thinks about therapy. Fuck. It’s all so fucking selfish, when he thinks about it.

 

It’s not like Morty has any money either, or he’d pay the few hundred a session and get the bus to the mall himself. He highly doubts a school counsellor has the depth to be able to deal with _his_ kind of problems, and normally he’d have assumed the same of Dr Wong, had he not seen how utterly nonplussed she was at the sight of his grandfather as a sentient, bloodied pickle. But oh - _oh God_ does Morty need help, he needs it _so_ badly but he has no idea how to ask for it, or even if he should. He knows what Rick thinks of the idea and to an extent, Beth. Summer cannot be expected to shoulder Morty's burdens either, she's barely older than him really. So instead, he lays awake at night, on one of the occasions where Rick  _isn't_ stumbling in at 1AM, drunk, and demanding an adventure out of him. He's laying there until he feels sleep forcibly take him, and drag him into nowhere. He's always met by this limitless pitch black, and this feeling like he's missing something important - and can only detect it in missing, disjointed strands. His memories feel like split-ends, broken, burnt apart, damaged and refusing to connect whilst brushing each other closely,  _teasing him -_ okay on the outside, but damaged closer up.

 

_" -  Don't' - sinking -  to remember - Rick - get rid - "_

 

Some are a bit clear, like  _Rick, I don't want to remember this - can you?  help me -_ others are just jumbles of words, swirling in the shitheap left of his mind. Some feel like they're important, like trigger words, but he can never shake or glean anything out of them. Garbled things which feel like they mean something but don't - " _granite" ,_ _"sandstorm", "checkmate", "swallow" -_ it's enough that he's written them in his textbooks over and over again, meditating over the strings of useless information in Mr Goldenfold's class when he should have been paying attention.

 

 _"I call them, Morty's Mind Blowers!" -_ he remembers the existence of the room in History class, and Rick's ear to ear smile.

 

The truth of the matter is, Morty is struggling – and he knows that he is. It isn't something he was able to work through with "Armothy" or something he could quite literally purge from his system. The problem is, he doesn't know exactly what the problem is. It's this strange, nebulous feeling of  _absentia -_ like he's lost something that he doesn't quite know how to get back and is in a constant state of deja-vu and flux as a result. It's left him absolutely tight and wound up to the core of his being and he isn't sure if anyone's even bothered to notice - since he's always been a little highly strung here and there. Thing's that he'd long since gotten used to - like the rejection or plain disregard from his peers, the bullying from Brad, being the  _weird and slightly off_ not-very-bright kid in school were no longer background noise in his life now. It was like somebody was blasting all his misery to the highest possible volume and he couldn't escape it. Any of it. It was enough to make his ears rupture - and that was no hyperbole. Morty could feel it, as he stood before Rick, twitching nervously, the sensation of blood he'd done his best to clean gently with a q-tip, dried and nestled around his ear drum in his left ear. Something was happening to him, and he didn't know who to tell - if he should tell - or what to do. Just that he needed time enough to figure it out. Try to, anyway - before Rick noticed it on one of their adventures and did something crazy like drag him to an alien hospital, or something. It's why he's failing even harder than usual - on the rare occasion he is at school, he's exhausted and he's sleeping, or unable to pay attention, too weak to get classes because physical education murders what little energy he has. All of it goes to Rick and his adventures, and Morty is practically a shell. 

 

“-Aw c-c-c’mon Rick, please?” the logic being that Beth is furious about his grades, he’s very barely getting Cs (mostly Fs) and he’d been unable to hide his report card, something which Rick blamed him for. He'd be hurt by it a little, maybe. In the beginning - sure, he definitely would have. The whole  _you're a piece of shit Morty_ speech had been done to him a thousand times already in varying degrees of sobriety, and not just from Rick. Just, mostly Rick. He's too tired to care now though, there's wrinkles forming under his glossy amber-brown eyes and even in his waking moments, he's starting to obsess - and sometimes hear - those broken bits of dreams. He almost feels like a HAM radio, picking up stupid, irrelevant stations but at poor frequency, even while Rick's mouth is moving, it's getting harder to pay attention these days.

 

'  _G-granite.'_

 

“It’ll distract her – it’s everything she w-wants right? A whole day with you? It’ll – she’ll forget how mad she is, and then we can keep doing adventures. I mean, it’s not like we can blame dad anymore,” and in truth, Morty doesn’t mean for the last part to sound vindictive. He doesn’t want it to sound like he blames Rick for his parent’s divorce, though it is at least, partly his fault. The man seems to catch the unintentional barb, but doesn’t react to it. Morty's able to keep it together in front of Rick, and even manages a nervous little smile, the kind he usually has when presenting Rick with a suggestion, as though he's waiting for the man to call it fucking retarded, or something.

 

_'Sandstorm'_

 

“That’s—that’s that’s kind of manipulative,” Rick snorts, putting down the curious little hexagonal device he’d been tinkering with at his workstation. Morty does his best to conceal his unease at Rick’s choice of words, it’s almost like he can see right through him, because yes, he _is_ being manipulative, but not towards just Beth. There’s an uncomfortable lump in the back of Morty’s throat while he kneads his fingers in his pockets, trying to look relaxed.

 

_'Swallow'_

 

 _'He can’t have caught on. Not like this. Not this early. Calm down Morty, chill.'_ He chastises himself internally and tries not to look too relieved when Rick caves, rolling his eyes and saying “Fine,” with a tone of finality, because he can see the brilliance in Morty’s plan. This would have to be a necessary sacrifice for Rick, if it meant remaining in Beth’s good graces. He could only push her so far, after all, proven at least slightly when she’d gotten frustrated enough to take Rick’s reverse metamorphosis serum after Morty had all but screamed that Rick had turned himself into a goddamn _pickle_ to get out of family therapy.

 

_'Checkmate'_

 

Morty Smith is struggling, and he isn't sure what to do. Instinct would say  _go to the fucking doctor, Morty -_ but he knows it's a fucking Rick-induced problem, he's a hundred percent  _sure_ of it when he goes to bed after missing an episode of Ball Fondlers thanks to Summer letting him nod off in front of that too, except it hadn't even been a good sleep, as it felt like the kind where you'd had none at all and just blacked out for a period. The dreams he had later that night, of doing things that felt far too real to be dreams sort of confirmed it, as he wouldn't put it past Rick to have some way of seriously screwing with his head. So, what good can some human doctor do for a Rick-problem, anyway? Even if they could help, insurance is expensive and the hospital bills would suck, and Beth barely makes enough to support the house and Jerry can barely cough up anything in the way of child support while also living in a grimy motel. That's not something Morty feels like he can honestly resent Jerry for, and Rick's answer would probably be to commit an intergalactic heist to pay for it, short of - well, yeah, another alien hospital visit. 

 

_Granite-Sandstorm-Checkmate-Swallow_

 

Plus, the nastier part of Morty's conscience says, if this  _is_ a Rick-induced madness, then Rick will probably just find some way of getting Morty to forget about it, if this is really what he's been doing, and that's the whole problem in the first place. He knows he's missing something, and he appears to be haemorrhaging in his sleep as a result of it. The fact of the matter is, he  _cannot_ trust Rick with his health, not when he's probably the lead-cause of whatever the hell was happening to him. He vows that if it gets worse, he'll tell someone, he doesn't want to - y'know -  _die_ or anything, but he needs to find some way of keeping his figurative marbles together even when Rick fucking steals them all. Morty Smith  _wants_ his goddamn memories back. Morty is  _sick_ of not feeling "whole" anymore, because it simply allows for all of the bullshit he usually ignores to fill it until it becomes the loudest thing in his life - Jessica ignoring him, Brad bullying him, Rick calling him a worthless piece of shit, Summer's cold indifference, Beth's selfishness, Jerry's cowardice. Fucking all of it. Morty needs to be whole again because a broken Morty cannot deal with the fallout of the Smith-Sanchez family breaking apart.

 

_'I'll tell Rick or someone after I find out what I'm missing, and I write it all down.'_

 

The rest fell into place of its own accord. It was easy, Morty realised – _far too easy,_ for him to manipulate himself into having free reign over a working environment that possessed enough gear to destroy the galaxy several times over. He takes no interest in anything immediately visible to him though, and focuses all of his attention to the hatch once he has the house to himself for the Saturday. He needs to get his shit together before people realise that he hasn't, Morty realises. He has to be  _okay_ because Rick is never "okay" - he's a depressed alcoholic with abysmal self-control and a narcissism problem too big to fully accept it and Beth's on her way to being a weak imprint of that. Summer is... well, she's more isolated from the family than ever because she's choosing to throw herself into volunteering so she can get into a decent college without suddenly being an all As-Bs nerd after being a straight Cs student her whole high school career. Someone in the Smith-Sanchez household has to be  _okay,_ and even though Morty is only fourteen, he's disarmed enough drunkenly produced neutrino bombs to realise that it has to be him. Nobody else.

 

_Granite-Sandstorm-Checkmate-Swallow_

 

He delicately puts a finger to his ear while walking down into the hatch, grimacing as a bit of blood tips his finger when it comes out. He obviously did what most millennials do, and googled it first, which said he probably was dying - and if that was the case, well shit, he's a lot less panicked about it than he would have been a month or so ago, and it does worry him, but he's deemed it a Rick-Induced-Space-Problem and tells himself that "Earth diagnosis is probably not reliable" by way of comforting his ridiculous amounts of anxiety whenever he thinks about the WebMD article.

 

When Morty's stood in the room, he's frozen - feeling his heart pounding against his rib-cage when he's stood in the room of memories - stacks upon stacks, shelves upon shelves of things deemed "Too Traumatic for Morty" or "Things Rick Doesn't Want Morty to Remember," - both sentiments, not always synonymous with each other, hence Rick's presence whenever Morty comes into this room. But not today. The mantras that drove him absolutely insane and kept him awake or feeling under rested felt ready to repeat another time before the frustrated teenager slams the hefty helmet down onto his skull, and looks around the room, vaguely remembering how it all worked.

 

_Plug and play._

 

He needs to silence the - silence the radio - get rid of the fucking  _hole -_ the empty vacuum that it felt like his mind was becoming. Looking around, the vials of curious coloured liquids seemed to have some sort of order to them, but his head felt too cloudy to even try to work through anything complex right now. Maybe if he goes through enough of these stupid things, he can fill in the gaps that he kept dreaming about - and then maybe he'd be lucid enough to find an intelligent way of getting Rick to stop screwing with his head so much. It's absolutely wrecking him - Morty realises - and with a scowl, he curses how childish his grandpa can be, when he makes a gripe for a random memory, and finds it labelled " _Shrimplydicks"._

 

"God Rick, memories aren't computer files, you can't name them a-any old random crap," Morty grumbles to himself, maybe a little insulted - because there were likely important, valuable things in here that were probably named something crude, like "SpaceAids Buttfuck" or something. Like they don't mean anything.

 

 _Like how they don't mean enough for Rick to be able to let you keep them in the first place -_ a nasty part of him that's been far too vocal lately, thinks.

 

Clenching his teeth, he shakes away the thought, and jams the memory into the front of the helm, feeling his eyes glaze over in a feeling remnant to slipping into a game of  _Roy -_ only much too real, and far less autonomous. It gave him a brief reprieve though, as his mind felt like it might split itself in two if it didn't.

 

_GranITesAndSTORMCHECKMATESWALLOW--_

 

Morty fell into a memory, and basked in a momentary, sweet silent relief.

 

* * *

 

 

_"Look - look," Rick burped, shaking an Erlenmeyer flask in front of Morty's eyes, filled with a thick, viscous liquid. It's a strange, muddy colour. They're standing in a strange, dome-like room, windowless and maddeningly shapeless, Rick seems panicked, but his hiding it under several swigs of whiskey and a heavy, overly-emphasised braggadocio. "D-dyou really think Grandpa doesn't have a back-up plan? A-always Morty! Jesus," he's scolding and chiding the boy for his lack of faith, and rightfully so. Morty is shaking though, and the complete, abject lack of faith in Rick's abilities is showing._

 

_Centauri-Florx 12, that's where they are. They're in The Dark Room, and there's no way they can escape, the portal gun has been confiscated by a Dolriggter - and Morty is much too terrified to do anything except try actively not to piss himself. They're fucking frightening, after all. They smile, but that's all they do - they're incapable of anything else, and they have far too many teeth. Even Rick's a little uneasy by them, but they possess a rare organism that is vital in possibly streamlining the process to creating portal fluid, and so Rick is here, mostly on a whim that he didn't need to act on, but Morty is in abject terror._

 

_Rick put his free hand on Morty's shoulder, as though that would stop him shaking._

 

_"M-morty - Grandpa.. Grandpa needs you to do something, he needs you to - to swallow this, okay?" he puts the flask into Morty's shaking hand, but holds his own around it, in case the kid drops it._

 

_"Rick - those things! They just - they ate that guy! Just - just ate him, in like, two chomps!" Morty's grimacing, backing away from the flask but finding himself kept in place by the older man, whose giving him a severe look. "And-and I'm not eating that, it looks like shit!"_

 

_"Just pretend it's chocolate milk," Rick rolls his eyes "-it's not, I just - fuck - those doors? They're made of an alloy that only two acids in the known universe can melt, so if you wanna go home, you'll drink it. I would, but my liver c-can't break this shit down anymore M-" he burps out the name, in a way he's becoming so accustomed to "M-OURGH-ty," he snarls "-it works hard enough. But this - n-needs to go through your digestive tract, alright Morty? By the time it - it makes its round through you, and it will. Quickly. Very, quickly, you need to basically - piss out an exit. You'll melt through the alloy. alright?"_

 

_Morty looks at him in disgust, holding the flask out at arm's length from his face after sniffing it, it smells like a dentist's office, and he's already repulsed._

 

_"Rick - is that, is that safe? I'm gonna pee acids?!" he practically shrieks, but when he does, Rick selfishly pours it down his throat until he's choking, his tongue in open rebellion the moment the liquid touches his lips and it tastes like a mixture of copper and vomit mixed into a flask._

 

_"Not harmful to the human body Morty, but it'll melt through clothes and - and this metal, so, in a few minutes, you- shit, don't vomit Morty," Rick's genuinely panicking, as this really is the only escape they have now, and he is loathe to have to rely on Morty to be the one to do it._

 

_"Swallow it for Grandpa, okay?" he soothes - it's no better than when Rick all but forced him into hiding megaseeds within his own body, even if he did his best to make sure Morty didn't hurt himself doing it. There's a palpable pain in Morty's eyes as some of the liquid dribbles down his lip, and Rick is startled by it almost, until he remembers Morty isn't used to it, and lacks the constitution that an alcoholic like Rick has. For him, this is freshly painful, a naked form of acid, and his own grandpa is forcing him to chug it down, even while his body gives way to pain._

 

_For a moment, Rick genuinely feels like shit - but it's the only way._

 

_"C-c'mon baby boy, you're almost there," he's not called Morty that ever, not this Morty - maybe once, when he was drunk. It's what he'd have called him if he'd have stuck around, but Morty's in too much pain to realise, Rick withdraws the flask between sips, he knows it's easier to just gunshot the thing down in one, but the way Morty's body is rebelling, and how slow the liquid is to pour out - like a syrup, he has to pause, and they're the **worst.**  _

 

_"R-Rick," Morty chokes, spluttering some of the coppery liquid out while he tries to hurriedly gather air back into his lungs. "-Rick I can't - it hurts. It - it feels like f-fire, I c- I can't,"._

 

_Rick bites down on his lip, and wipes away the telltale smear of vomit from his lower-lip, doing his best to remain neutral, though his eyes have softened considerably, and one large hand is going through Morty's soft brown curls in an effort to be comforting._

 

_"It'll be okay Morty, the - the quicker you d-drink it, the quicker you'll pee it out, and we'll be home free okay? I'll never take you back to this place. I promise," - and Morty is ashamed to admit it, but the tears are flowing freely down his cheeks as his tongue feels like it's curling in on itself like a sheet of wrapping paper, and his lungs feel ready to tear themselves in two._

 

_"I- Is this safe Rick? My - chest - it ... it feels like - dying - " it feels worse than any other horrible thing Rick's ever put him through, it feels like someone's walking through his body and flipping the "off" switch on every organ he has, he's lost control of his jaw a little too, as his words become mumbled, and embarrassingly, he's lost control of his saliva too, and it's pouring in excess down his lips. He looks so vulnerable, and the pain is tangible - and though it's a necessary evil, Rick knows that it's going to be one of those things that insists on haunting him further down the line, no matter how logical the solution is._

 

_"It's safe. If I drank it, I'd probably die - with my liver - and all - but for you? Safe. I promise. Grandpa promises," he can't remember the last time he's spoken like this to a Morty - he can't even be sure if he ever has - he's practically cooing, and he can feel a suspicious, traitorous warmth behind his eyes, no matter how neutral his expression is._

 

_"Swallow it for me Morty - " he tips the flask down without warning, since it's easier without a big build-up. "C'mon - be - be Grandpa's little hero, okay?"_

 

_"A-all those times I saved you, this time - this time it's all you okay? And - and you can pick the next... all the adventures! For the next year! I promise, please - just - c'mon, you're so close." He wipes at Morty's chin a little, and it feels like with every passing moment this burns through his gut, the more he's regressing into a child, and Rick can tell. The pain's becoming so much that Morty is practically shutting down - he doesn't blame him. Rick's only drunk The Emergency a total of three times in all the sixty-something years he's existed, and every time had seemed an insurmountable feat. The fact he's demanding it of Morty is - is well, nothing short of disgusting._

 

_"G-rampa - " he's gurgling and gagging on the liquid, more sharp tears coming out of his eyes but falling across his temples this time, from how far back his head is tilted in an effort to avoid the tongue a lot more and save him from tasting it. "Gr-amp-a  I cahn't --!"_

 

_"Shh, shh, yes you can, yes you can baby boy, see? You're halfway done. You're halfway done and Grandpa is so proud of you Morty. So proud."_

 

_"Grandpa - pl - please - s- stop - I can'--t I think I'm going to die, it hurts - so bad - I - I thinkimgonnadie - " he's sobbing now - and Rick's gently correcting him, swallowing the thick lump that's formed in his throat as Morty begins to beg him not to pour anymore down his throat._

 

_It has to be all of it, or Morty might not produce enough fluid for them to escape._

 

_"Grandpa wont let that happen, never ever. I'm so sorry Morty - I'm - I'll take you somewhere nice after this. Somewhere so nice. You'll love it - and we'll watch Ball Fondlers after - and get Chinese, from that...that place you like that Beth hates. The one with the free spring rolls. You'll never - never have to drink something like this again if I can help it, okay?"_

 

_"Please Rick - please stop - I don't... I can't take anymore in, I'm gonna - I'm gonna - "_

 

_"I'm sorry Morty,"  forcing his mouth to stay open with one ashen hand, spidery fingers slipping into his mouth, he all but shoves the whole glass in, forcing the last drops of the viscous substance down Morty as the vibrations of his open-mouthed scream rock through Rick's skin and feel like they'd turn his bones to dust from the inside out._

 

_He coldly tips the rest down his throat, and holds him by the shoulders after dropping the empty flask with a shatter, as Morty shakily reaches for his fly, sniffing and looking for the weakest point in the metal._

 

_"I'm so fucking sorry Morty," Rick whispers._

 

_He's met with a shuddering, sniffling Morty, who does his best to mimic cold indifference, only for his voice to break, and betray him utterly._

 

_"S-shut up Rick. Just, shut up."_

 

* * *

 

 

Morty's eyes flutter and he wakes up in a thick mop of sweat under the memory helmet, his hands blindly groping for his Adam's apple as though searching for the telltale burn in his esophagus from the outside. He's shaking now, from head to toe - but he's made sense of one thing now - why his brain keeps remembering  _swallow -_ and it's pure luck that it's the first one he picked. There's far too many memories here to get lucky again, but it cements something to the troubled teenager.

 

His little haemorrhages are definitely a Rick-Induced-Problem.

 

He doesn't remember Rick calling him baby boy, or little hero - he doesn't remember the gross sense of invasion and agony, and now he knows why. If he was Rick, he wasn't certain he'd want a memory of something so - so strangely forceful and damning and tangibly disgusting in ways that Morty didn't think he had the words to articulate, and if he was Rick, he was certain he wouldn't want his grandson remembering how much he'd hurt him.

 

Morty looked out at the vast array of memories, and grimaced.

 

Well, now he  _had_ to get through them all.

 

"Goddammit Rick," he hisses, but his tone is almost too tired to contain malice in it anymore. 

 

He picks up a vial of red fluid, and jams it into the helm.

 

It was going to be a long fucking day.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On the "if you want this to be C137cest" thing I'd need to restock my alcohol and tbh age Morty up cos I just wouldn't be comfortable with it otherwise.


	2. Deadboy & the ElephantMorty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The effect of not going back to Dr Wong begins to rear its ugly head once more.

 

Morty makes his way out of the room at 7PM, not being able to account for when exactly Rick and Beth would return, it was a high-risk endeavour. He is careful to return everything perfectly back in place, shakily taking note of the shelves and memories that he’d been through – there’s a few bonuses to memory viewing though. One is that the helm is more focused on being a viewer than it is on all of the sensory experiences, so it differs greatly from the technology at Blips & Chitz virtual gaming software, which is good, or Morty would have suffered a lot more than he already was. His thoughts became a little less disordered after filling in a few of the gaps in his mind, though that wasn’t saying much, considering how jumbled he felt on a daily basis. He was able to put together what all the colours of the memory fluid meant – blue for Morty’s mistakes, red for Rick’s and purple for the family. There seemed to be an almost even split with Morty’s blue vials only slightly overtaking Rick’s, and thankfully, “family errors” were rather small but…

 

Well, there’s a total of thirty-eight, so Morty goes out of his way to get through those first – and regrets it almost instantly.

 

 _“Summer! I choose Summer!” –_ he can still hear Beth’s voice in his mind when he takes the helmet off, his eyes suspiciously glassy. It was a memory of his mother having to choose between him and his sister, before Rick came to save them. She made her choice so quickly, so easily, so insistently – that it was _cruel._ It was easier to go through a memory of Rick doing something petty and cruel, like letting him go through an alien’s digestive tract just so he can call him “butt-baby,” for the duration of the ride back home when he comes out the other end. A vast majority of the Rick memories seem almost petty, not all of them, but – a great majority are an indicator of his grandfather’s insecurity, and his narcissism, refusing to let himself come across as anything less than infallible when he can help it.

 

Fuck. ‘ _That shit was easier to deal with than the fact Mom just chose Summer over me in a heartbeat.’_

 

Thing is, if Morty was given a choice between himself and Summer, he’d choose Summer too – but when you’re a mother, isn’t supposed to be different? Aren’t you supposed to love your babies equally? Dammit – shouldn’t it have been _harder_ for her?

 

 _‘Summer’s the good one,’ –_ he tries to ignore the bit of resentment that flourishes at the thought, because he loves his sister. He loves her a lot, even if she can be a little on the cold side, she’s always been there for Morty if he ever truly needed her. That’s more than can be said for Beth at sometimes, Jerry was always the softer of the two, but Beth despised coddling with a passion. She was the kind of parent who let their kids cry themselves to exhaustion because it’s more logical to assert dominance, even if all Morty had wanted was a cuddle. Resentfully, he wondered if she’d been like that with Summer – it had been something that came up momentarily, when Morty had his own little shake at being a father to a Gazorpian.

 

He shakes his head of the memory – he didn’t even think he could remember that far back until he started going through “Mind Blowers,” – and hell, he even had the memory of him asking Rick to get rid of it. Those were always interesting, especially as Rick tended to wipe the memory of him asking in order to make a clean-cut job of it, and would act in some half-hearted surprise every time Morty asked, making out like he "probably has something" that can help do that, when he knows damn well that he does.

 

_“Rick – please I j-just… I can’t – I don’t want to be that kid who hates his mom. I just want to forget about it. Just get rid of it.”_

_Rick had given him an inscrutable look, like he wanted to say something, before settling with a lazy, devil-may-care shrug and a lop-sided smile._

_“Sure, whatever. No skin off my ass," he glances away from Morty, up at Beth, whose the last to step through the portal home once Rick sets Summer and Morty loose from alien captivity. Summer has no desire to relish in the awkward moment, and feels like a gooseberry in the moment, even though it had been all about her, and Beth's shamelessly easy choice._

 

_"Jesus Christ Beth, seriously? Neee- " URPRRP   "-ver mind, I don't care, go through the portal Morty and go wait in the garage, I'll take care of it there," he waves Morty off, and his unibrow is set into a steady frown at his daughter, who has the good grace to look ashamed while awkwardly rubbing at her elbow. He shakes his head silently, knowing that just how much Beth seeks his approval that it would be enough to shatter her more than any harsh words. With her, there was rarely ever a need for it, and he can see her wince after the fact._

 

_His look was damning - because he knows by erasing Morty's memory, Beth doesn't have to be responsible for what she's done, but he wants her to know that Morty is hurt enough to ask Rick to wipe it out of his mind before any of them have even gotten home because he's so hurt that he cannot stand to look at her and wait long enough for them to be in private so he can ask Rick to do it there._

 

_Rick turns his back at her coldly, and puts a hand on Morty's shoulder, urging him through the portal, walking behind him as Beth trails along last._

 

Morty had, at the time, wondered if there was anything that Beth could do that would make Rick snap at her, and had felt a little resentful at the time that he hadn't done something like that when Morty told her what exactly he'd portalled into, why the silence was so awkward, and why Summer practically Olympian-bolted through the portal back home to avoid the impending situation. He'd felt resentful, but not surprised - yet with the gift of hindsight, he was able to see all of Rick's expressions and take note of the details he'd been too upset to appreciate. Rick hadn't stuck up for him, he hadn't raged at Beth for her actions, but he'd given her his disapproval, and that - to someone like his mother he knew - was almost earth-shattering, especially considering how she'd readily sacrifice a disgusting amount from her own family just for the sake of Rick's fleeting approval.

 

When Morty realises he's crying in his room, he wondered if some things were better left alone - but no. No, now that he knows they're there, he needs to get through all of those memories. All of them, even the stupid ones - the stupid ones that haunted him, like Rick's fundamental misunderstanding of a common idiom - "Taking things for granted," - he'd been so embarrassed by it, and too narcissistic to accept his mistake and move on that he simply wiped it from Morty's memory without even asking. 

 

_'Huh, Granite. That must be it.'_

 

What a stupid memory to have haunt him, Morty mused, but at least he'd filled in another gap. Rick Sanchez's ego must make up for a lot of missing space, Morty realised - with that sensation of resentment flaring inside of him again. He wondered blithely just how much he'd end up hating his own family by the time he got through these memories - hating  _Rick._ The thought sent a nervous shiver down his spine, could he even hate Rick in the first place? He isn't wholly sure. If somebody asked Morty if he had any friends at school, he'd say no, but if someone asked him if he had any friends at all - he'd say Rick, without any hesitation.

 

He felt his cheeks burning with shame at the realisation as he made his way to the bathroom for a long, burningly hot shower, wanting to scrub the sensation of abandonment out of his skin. If someone asked Rick Sanchez if he had any friends he could probably list off a menagerie of alien life-forms he's partied with over his long stretch of time world-hopping. Hell, half of them are on the guest-list on any party Rick's ever thrown, with a healthy smattering of enemies who in any other situation would probably try to kill him. Yeah, maybe they aren't best friends, but Rick's lived a long life, he even had a band at some point. What's Morty ever done?

 

 _'Anything worthwhile you've ever done has only been because of Rick.'_ The spiteful little voice in his head again speaks, and it's so unremittingly harsh that it may as well have come right out of Rick's mouth himself. It's something that Morty could picture him saying. Hell - he probably has said something to that effect in the past, but it's gotten drowned under the sheer amount of "Drunk Rick" rants the boy has had to endure since his grandpa came barrelling into his life.

 

Yeah, somehow, being digested by an alien as a joke was better than dealing with this shit - Morty muses, shimmying out of his clothes and stepping into the shower, turning a metallic dial to the hotter regions until the glass panes of the windows in the bathroom began to fog up with a thick layer of steam. 

 

_'You're nothing without Rick.'_

 

He scrubs at his skin, ignoring the gentle flecks of maroon that are getting washed down his neck from his ear, dripping onto the clear porcelain of the bath-shower fixture as he idly fiddled with bits of the curtain. He doesn't want to believe that, but it's true - it's not something he can pretend isn't. He isn't like Summer, whose always had friends, always texting somebody, always going out - active and social. Morty's always been the weird, wiry little kid who never got his growth spurt who just awkwardly drifted from class to class, room to room, only noticed when he does something wrong.

 

_'Like when you wet your desk like a baby in class.'_

 

He wishes the internal snark wouldn't be so cruel, but it's true enough, isn't it? And - well, yeah, didn't they just sort of gloss over that? They never really got to the bottom of it, even if Summer had only just huffed enamel for fun, Morty was definitely not wetting himself for fun, he could be sure of that. It amounted to Morty having to apologise for his behaviour, and everybody going home at the end of Dr Wong's incredibly accurate analysis of Rick and his behaviour, all because the adults who'd dragged them there in the first place didn't like the possibility of facing their own demons.

 

He sighed, shaking his head under the bleat of the shower-head, ignoring how red-raw his skin had gone after he'd scrubbed away at himself absentmindedly, almost like he was trying to get to bone and get rid of that vague feeling of being digested on Rigel-7. Morty's respite was, however, short - as he began hearing things at that strange, scratchy frequency. He wanted to groan. This is the kind of stuff that drove people crazy, wasn't it? He probably was going crazy, losing his damned mind. It's not really a surprise, considering all the stuff his grandfather has dragged him through, from purges to truth tortoises, anybody else probably would have snapped, right? Maybe it's an inevitability. 

 

- _Sandstorm -_

 

_\- M-oURGHTY - Go Home!_

 

And for fuck's sake, it has to be  _Rick's voice_ doesn't it? They're so intertwined with each other that most every memory has something to do with Rick in some shape or form so most of the time, those are the fragments he's picking up on. Feeling like his peaceful shower has been desecrated, Morty steps out and gets changed, skipping dinner entirely and mumbling distantly about a migraine when he passes Summer on the stairs, before going into his room, keeping the light off and flopping faced down into his pillow. When the noise becomes too much to deal with, he digs out an old iPod that used to belong to Summer before she upgraded, and jams the earbuds in, shuffling to a random track before sighing blissfully for the distraction.

 

-  _D-don't let me go Rick! -_

 

Morty sleeps.

 

* * *

 

 

Breakfast is a quiet affair in the household, especially now Jerry is gone - when he was momentarily unemployed and still living there, it had gotten so  _noisy -_ but now, the family was back to peace and quiet. Beth leaves early for work, so the kids usually pour themselves cereal, unless it's a weekend, when there's a lovely hot breakfast waiting for them. Rick occasionally joins them, or just picks up the bowl and moves to the living room, idly flicking through interdimensional cable channels to avoid any awkward small talk or to a grab a coffee to deal with a mind-blowing hangover. Today is no different, Summer comes down and helps herself to a protein shake as she's now apparently watching her figure, not that she has any need, in Morty's opinion, but she's at that stage where only her own misconceptions about her body matter, so he refrains from saying anything. He'd gotten a semi-decent sleep with the assistance of music, so he has both earbuds hanging in his ears after he brushes his teeth and silently pours himself some Strawberry Smiggles.

 

He cant say he has much of an appetite these days so he's grabbing himself a smaller bowl and half-filling it, ignoring the contact of cool air against his searing skin when Summer opens the door to leave. She's too absorbed in her phone today to take much notice of Morty this morning - some boy at school - Robbie-something has finally texted her back, so she's turned the rest of the world off in favour of focusing on that for now. It's a relief, he doesn't have to make awkward small-talk or anything.

 

_'Only you would feel awkward making small talk with your own family.'_

 

It didn't seem like the snide Rick-esque voice wanted to give Morty a break this morning though, and it proved to be a bad omen for the rest of the day. He had a double session of math with Mr Goldenfold that morning and they'd be a test coming up and if he failed, he'd be bumped down into remedial classes with the kids who eat glue and need rubber grips on their pencils. It's not that they're bad people, but people have always accused Morty of being slow in some sort of way, and Morty always had trouble trying to distinguish what kind of "slow" they meant. Is it because he doesn't have many friends? He's not as smart as someone who grew up to be a surgeon and whose father's a super genius scientist? No, that couldn't be it, could it? Or Jerry wouldn't have agreed with Beth whenever the topic was brought up.

 

Morty sat in class, staring down blankly at his sheet of paper, his no.2 pencil scraping the edges of his desk idly as he felt his eyes glazing over, like he was - oh fuck - he's not hallucinating is he?  _Here? Now? Of all the places?_ He jerks a little bit in his seat but isn't noticed, like when your body spasms in bed after dreaming about falling from a vast height. Thankfully, people are too busy concentrating on their papers, and Mr Goldenfold is nursing his third coffee of the morning and idly scrolling through his phone after finishing with a stack of work.

 

_"Morty, stay out of this. You are obviously not capable of judging these situations on your own," that gentle condescension from Jerry, who tries to be more tender than the other family members when speaking harshly of him, maybe because Morty is always more forgiving of Jerry in much the same way. Then Rick's voice pierces through like a hot knife through butter, sharp and accusing with an upturn of mockery in it, like he knows he's just putting it all on to look like the bigger person._

 

_"What are you trying to say about Morty? That he's stupid or something?"_

 

Looking down at his half-hearted attempt to do math, Morty can't help but think that yeah, yeah he is - and whatever smart genes came down the Sanchez line to Beth that enabled her to be a specialist surgeon flat-out missed Morty and probably went to Summer, since she's at least a C-student. Honestly, just the thought of everyone being correct about him and his lack of intelligence is enough to make Morty start feeling sick, it's not like he stresses out about it too much - because he gets to live a life that some people who spend their life devoted to academia never get to - but... God, he just  _wished_ he had something that wasn't there because of Rick. He wish he had just a little bit of his  _own_ intelligence, and show that yes - "Morty Smith  _is_ capable!" even if it feels like he's going insane.

 

_"Oh, don't high-road us, dad. You know fully well that Morty is the last child that needs to be missing classes." Ah, Beth - ever the patronising one, no wonder Jerry got so sick of it sometimes._

 

_"I-I-I don't know what you mean by that. Can can can you be a little bit more specific?" Rick, still mocking, still egging, still goading - even though Morty is standing right there, trying to hold the pieces of his self-esteem together haphazardly, before Jerry dashes it in one snarling outburst._

 

_"Oh, for crying out loud he's got some kind of disability or something! Is that what you want us to say?"_

 

_"I do?"_

 

_"Well, duh-doy, son. Look, I love you, Morty, but... we both know you're not as fast as the other kids, and if you want to compete in this world, you got to work twice as hard." he spoke like it was obvious, that even Morty should realise he's slow, but hell, maybe he's too stupid to do even that much._

 

The pencil shakes in Morty's hand - he wishes his family didn't place such a value on intelligence sometimes, and that he could just be a normal kid who goes out and kisses girls and doesn't have such lofty figures to live up too. They already resigned themselves to Morty just being bellow average that they wont give him the time of day. If Morty had shown any early promise in something like - hell -  _biology_ or something, maybe Beth would have noticed him for something positive for once, instead of his persistant awkwardness and worried notes from teachers saying things along the lines of "Trouble fitting in," and "Struggling socially," - he doesn't want to be a brilliant specialist surgeon or even a super genius but God... Morty just wants to be average, maybe slightly above average. He could settle for that. He could settle for Rick not treating him like he's amazingly slow. Then, maybe things like wetting himself in class wouldn't be relegated to "less important" - maybe Morty just had to show promise for them to care even slightly.

 

 _'I can.. I gotta.. keep my eyes open..'_ he tries to shake off the disordered thinking, chewing down on his lower lip in thought.

 

Morty's eyes feel warm as he stares down at the math problems - he's missed so much school thanks to Rick that he never learned how to simplify algebraic questions, even though he's seen Rick do it all the time. He can see it now - in his mind's eye, his grandpa picking up a marker and wetting his lip slightly, long brow creased in thought before moving his hand fluidly across a whiteboard in the garage, working out equations and creating formula as easily as fish swim and Morty breathes.

 

_'I'm not gonna have a breakdown over a goddamn math problem - I'm n-not--'_

 

He stares down at the question, and tries to remember being awake in class when Goldenfold taught it. Simultaneous equations. Morty is sure he messed up the whole section on fractions and trigonometry and stuff, and he's certain he's going to remedial mathematics no matter what he does, so, mostly, he's trying to prove it to himself - if only to silence the nasty Rick-like voice in his head that has been needling him all day and night. He tells himself he'd at least been present long enough to learn  _something,_ and that he didn't spend every waking moment letting his eyes wander to Jessica.

 

_You gotta do the inverse - see - to solve an equation (save me Morty) -and...there's that...order... Mr Goldenfold always... BIDMAS...? -_

 

Inverse...reverse - the opposite, right? Morty frowns, and ignores the tingle of warmth behind his eyes. If he can just do this one thing, he can tell himself he's not completely hopeless. It's a simple thing, he tells himself - but he's been absent for so many classes that the only reason he isn't struck off the roster is that Rick brings him back just often enough that he still counts as a student, but the shame catches up with Morty when he finds himself tearing up over the basics.

 

_Solve the equation 5x + 5 = x + 13, and find the value of xyou've got to hold on MortytheSANDSTORM--_

 

Morty violently shakes his head, ignoring the curious look thrown his way by a student to his left when he does, and chews his pencil aggressively- no he has to, he has to be able to think enough that he does at least one question even kind of correctly - or he really is as thick as they come - 

 

_The reality of it is, you're as dumb as they come --_

 

 **Shut up, _SHUT UP!_ - ** the pencil snaps in Morty's hand, and he's forced to work with a too-short nub just so he can actually write something on his paper, now he's certain that critical little voice in his head is Rick's - he's internalised it now, every barb and every utterance of his lack of intelligence, it sits in the back of his mind, and reminds him of his place in the world.

 

_'I gotta... put x... on the same side... so I gotta... take it off...? (Morty you have to hold on--)  - subtract x from both sides..._

 

 _5x( - x) + 5 = x (-x) + 13 I choose Summer! I choose Summe--_ _4x + 5 = 13 - need to get..._ _4x on its own by subtracting.....(you're gonna die here, brat) - 5 from both sides._

 

Morty jolts again, and looks around anxiously at the clock, swallowing to try to get rid of this lump of dryness in his throat - the memory binge he'd had last night was good for dispelling the certain fixations he'd had on some particularly loud fragments of memory, but it seemed to wake up more and more missing pieces, and the sudden, sensual yet chilling tones practically licked his blood crusted ear as he remembered it as clear as day.

 

 _You're gonna die here, brat - what the hell was that? -_ Morty cringed a little, trying to ignore the fact he'd spent thirty minutes on one problem trying to string a coherent thought together. It wasn't even worth him being in school, he could barely hang onto a single thought without something jumbling it up.

 

_4x + 5 (-5) = 13 (-5)_

 

_4x = 8_

 

He's breathing heavily, just the amount of memory vials in the hatch in Rick's garage had shown Morty just how much had been wiped out of his mind, but now it felt like his brain was in open rebellion, and he wondered, briefly, if this is what schizophrenia felt like. Holy shit, did Rick give him schizophrenia? Morty does his best not to panic and give himself unnecessary anxiety, instinctively checking his ear with his finger tip as he looked down at his paper, trying to remember his original goal.

 

_Find the value of x...divide both sides by 4-rty c'mere you little TEASE--_

 

_4x ÷ 4 = 8 ÷ 4_

 

_x = 2_

 

"Morty....Moooorty? ** _Mr Smith!"_** the voice jolts him out of his reverie, and he realises he's the only person in class, and that everyone had filed out, having completed their papers and handed them in to Mr Goldenfold. Morty scowls, because that means he must have missed hearing the bell entirely, and even his teacher sounds more like an adult from a Charlie Brown skit. He's saying stuff - Morty is certain that he is - but he's only registering it in short, spaced out chunks, like a skipping record. There's a palpable concern in Mr Goldenfold's eyes as he gets up and walks over to his desk. 

 

Mr Goldenfold takes a good look at his student - a daydreamer for sure, and has been suffering a grade plummet linked likely to persistent attendance problems, but a good, unobtrusive kid when he bothers to show up for class. But even someone who shows up as rarely as Morty does, Mr Goldenfold can tell there's something off about him, his colour seems off, and there's wrinkles forming under his eyes. Just a rudimentary glance at his paper tells the teacher that he hadn't even gotten halfway down the page let alone flipped it over to do the other side. The poor kid had done even less than fifty percent of the test, and from the unfocused, sickly gaze he had, probably hadn't even realised there were questions on the back too. His usual irritation for slackers gives way to something else, the closer he gets.

 

Then he smells it, and that's when he doubles back, slight disgust on his face.

 

"Morty - Morty, you do not look well at  _all, -_ get yourself to the nurse's office and clean yourself up, okay?" Morty's pissed himself - for the second time in school, the first being in history class - he'd heard about it in the staff room and even embarrassingly encountered the family at the same therapist's office, after all.

 

Morty snaps out of his strange daze, and the tiny, barest hint of a smile that he had at his own work faded instantly, his entire face burning a bright red as he tries to tug down his yellow shirt in a futile attempt to make his crotch look any less wet, not that it's helped, because there's a small puddle under the desk anyway, and Mr Goldenfold doesn't have the heart to shout when he sees Morty looking like he might have a stroke.

 

"You're - obviously too sick to be here right now, you can make up the test another time just - Morty...?" Mr Goldenfold frowns, the boy's lips are moving, but no words are coming out, and he's shaking a little bit, before turning his head slightly and quickly trying to cover up his left ear. It doesn't do much though, because there's a smooth, coppery substance dripping onto Morty's top lip that he tastes first, before he realises his nose is bleeding for the first time too. It's now that the math teacher feels a sense of urgency, and very quickly screams down the corridor to the hall monitor to go and get the nurse, while he grabs his cell phone to call an ambulance.

 

"Morty! Morty! Morty stay with us -  _Morty!"_ the last thing Morty sees is the concern in his face, his tone raising higher and higher with mounting panic as his eyes begin to roll back in his skull slowly, energy seeping out of his body at the same steady pace that urine had, moments prior. The hand over his ear sags down to his side, brushing a desk leg and revealing a steady trickle of blood down his from his left ear as he begins to haemorrhage in his seat, his tiny body lurches forward - and his forehead slaps the desk with a loud bang.

 

_**"Morty!"** _

 

_'--You're a piece of shit, Morty, and I can prove it mathematically.'_

 

Darkness.

 

* * *

 

 

Beth doesn't answer her phone because she's in surgery, and Morty's home address is the one listed as the place to call if the emergency contact couldn't be reached. Jerry actually picks up his phone, even though he's only managed to wrangle some shitty temp work with a call centre after the Galactic Federation is destroyed, it's better than nothing. He's more than willing to risk his commission if Morty's in danger - but he doesn't even have enough money to put gas in his car, so he goes into overdraft without thinking about it just to floor it to his son. Beth still isn't picking up - and it sounds  _bad -_ if it's bad enough that Morty's in hospital and not at the nurse's office or just sent to be picked up and taken home by a parent, then it is  _bad._

 

Jerry Smith is a lot of things, he's a coward, he's not very bright, he can be a bit of an ass at times too - but nobody can tell him that he doesn't love his son. 

 

That's why he's calling Rick - the two have no love lost for each other, but their little solo adventure had made contact between them at least a little less painful. They are not friends, by any means - but they're civil, and that's already a massive improvement. Still, it doesn't mean Rick is happy to be disturbed, especially by goddamn  _Jerry_ of all people, and he isn't even certain when or how Jerry even got his number, it's not somebody he would ever contact.  Rick answers the phone with a loud belch and a snarky disposition. He absolutely loathes being interrupted, especially for stupid shit, and Jerry was practically synonymous with "Stupid Shit,".

 

"What the h-- _URRRRP-_ ell do you want, Jerry?" the voice down the line speaks as though he's already impatient with the man, even though he hasn't actually said anything. Jerry flings the phone on the dashboard after smacking the loudspeaker button clumsily with his phone, his heartbeat pounding so loudly he thinks it might rip out of his chest.

 

"Beth'snotpickingup," he speaks in one long rush because he's in an absolute panic.

 

"Well, duh Jerry, you're divorced," is the icy response, like he's talking to a particularly slow child - but Jerry railroads Rick - as though he hasn't even heard him, practically hyperventilating as the sound of people honking angrily at Jerry's erratic driving sounds down the line.

 

"Morty's in hospital - _GET BETH_ \- Do your - do your green hole thing - just - oh god - he's in the emergency room Rick! He haemorrhaged in his math class!" Jerry's practically screaming, and for a moment, there's nothing from Rick down the other end apart from the sounds of shuffling and rapid movements, and metal objects being tossed around.

_"...Which. Hospital. Jerry."_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On the subject of C137cest – I’ve decided this story is a preslash and there will be no romantic focus in this story as it’s aimed at the carer relationship between grandpa and grandson foremost, and character development. Also, Morty is much too young and lacking in life experiences in the romantic department for me to do anything about it in this story. HOWEVER, this is an equally high-effort sequel planned which takes place a few years after the events of this story conclude, which is where the slash will be. NOT here. I hope that pleases all parties ^^. Now, onward and upward!
> 
> Song of the chapter - "Stop! I'm Already Dead" - by Deadboy & the Elephantmen


	3. The Morty in the Rye

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rick, as usual, has an unconventional solution for fixing Morty.

 

Rick let Beth know exactly how he felt with regards to the medical profession on Earth when he was content to let Morty stay in Seattle General for all of four hours before deciding that it wouldn’t be good enough. Yes, the people of Earth had a profound, deep and complex understanding for their own biology which they would seldom find on other planets, but they’re woefully behind in terms of medical advancements. Partly because of intelligence but mostly due to a lack of resources that interact with the human composition in the way that foreign, otherworldly substances do. The fact of it is, while Earth can do a lot of things correctly, it is woefully limited in its resources - a fact Rick is all too aware of and irritated by when doctors come back, tittering in annoyance that their neurologists are  _busy,_ and that their scans came up _abnormal._ The other thing to note, despite the come-and-go of the Galactic Federation and Earth's new involvement with life-forms outside of their own natives is - they don't know what exactly to do when encountering something unknown out of their remit. They're all so sickeningly planetary, even despite the revelations of life beyond them, so they're not smart enough to help Morty, Rick thinks.

 

"I'll take care of it sweetie," Rick says somewhat blandly, his eyes wandering past Beth to look at Morty's prone form. Jerry, for once, isn't arguing with his ex-wife or even bothering to acknowledge Rick right away, he just looks a bit pale, and is clinging to the side of Morty's bed until his knuckles go white. The level of concern he's showing would be surprising except that deep down, Rick knows that for all his flaws, Jerry Smith isn't a horrible person. He's just not very bright, and has some glaring character flaws - but hey, who doesn't? It's only now that privately Rick can acknowledge that perhaps he'd been a little harsh in his treatment of the man. He isn't too bad, not really. Not deep down.

 

He's surprised when Jerry still doesn't acknowledge Beth, and doesn't turn around to look at them - his eyes are locked on the dried blood at the crevice of Morty's nose from where he'd stopped bleeding and been cleaned up very quickly before he was rushed for an emergency scan. 

 

Jerry Smith, despite his very human ego, knows when to humble himself and will gladly do so when it came to the safety of his children, and that's why he addresses the smartest person in the room - because in this moment, Morty is all that matters.

 

"Rick, what's happening to my son? Why can't they  _help him?"_ it's some miracle that the man keeps his voice steady, but there's heavy stress in his words when he speaks that betrays how close he is to his voice breaking. Jerry isn't very good at pretending he's brave, but at least his immediate concern is the right thing. His son. The scientist takes a second to consider it after a hearty helping from his flask, tucking it into his lab coat as he leafs through some scan photos that by all rights, he shouldn't be holding - the attending doctor was none too pleased by it either, but Rick silences him easily with a _"Shut up Doogie Howser, I could do your job with one eye closed,"_ \- with the kind of confidence that tells the man that he has the brains to back it up too, even if he's unbearably arrogant.

 

"It's because they're only human Jerry, they're very limited in their understanding," Rick is surprisingly patient, before picking a clear spot to level his portal gun after reaching back into his jacket.

 

"That's why we're taking Morty h--" he hiccups slightly, wiping the telltale string of vomit from his bottom lip and doing his best to remain nonplussed. "-Home, I can do better than these hacks," gesturing cruelly in the vague direction of the attending staff on the ward.

 

"Cant you - can't you - I don't know, take him to an alien hospital? Like where I was?" Jerry's voice gets higher, he's panicking now and any pretense of hiding it goes away. Not even Beth walking over and putting a comforting hand on his shoulder is doing much to help him, and whenever she looks at Morty, she can feel her entire throat start to dry up because that's her  _baby boy -_ and she's  _sick_ with nobody sans perhaps Rick knowing what to do.

 

"If he needs to go, I'll take him there J- _Jerry_ ," the impatience wheedles back into Rick's tone, eyes narrowing at the pair. "But you'll pardon me if I don't trust aliens and their understanding of human brain biology, it's a lot more precise and particular than closing up a few bullet holes in a dimwit. My -- _URRRP--_ nderstanding, however, is much better than theirs  _and_ I have access to, y-y-y'know, a  _plethora_ of intergalactic medicines with a better sense on how they'll react to a human body so -- " he sneers - because goddammit, how did they - for even a moment - forget that he was the smartest man in the universe? "I'm already more qualified than an alien or a human doctor,".

 

"Get him through the goddamn portal would you? I need to go get some shit from the garage," the self-assured confidence that oozed  _'I'm Rick Sanchez and I can do fucking anything '-_ washed over the family and their body language relaxed if only slightly, under the belief that he can and will fix it all. They don't need to see Rick worrying, they're already panicked and their panic does absolutely nothing practical for him. He needs to be clearheaded and frankly that's hard enough with the hangover he's sporting. and now he's possibly expected to do  _brain surgery_ so - he's not in the best of moods.

 

"Geez Morty, you couldn't have picked a better day to pull this shit?" he snaps in irritation, rubbing the side of his head awkwardly after stepping through the portal. How didn't he  _see_ this coming? They practically spend every spare, free moment they have working on something together, how wasn't this  _obvious -_ he was a super-genius. Things like this don't come out of nowhere, maybe for idiots and normal people it's a "bolt out of the blue," but Rick knows Morty, Rick knows  _his_ Morty right down to the cellular level, if there was something grievously wrong...

 

_'Why didn't I spot this?'_

 

His eyes flit to the scans in his hand, they're primitive in their simplicity to Rick but they don't need to be complex to show what is obviously an intracerebral hemorrhage, the difference is, there's a foreign substance there - almost like a thin film that Rick already has a vague idea of what it could be. It could be blood, but blood shows up differently on these things, he's sure of it. He hopes that for once, he's wrong. But it's rare that he is. He's just unsure if he can handle the possibility of this being something he may be responsible for in some way. Rick's teeth feel like glass in his mouth as he grinds them together harshly after stepping through the portal, quickly picking up every tool he thinks he could conceivably need. Honestly he's lucky that Morty didn't have a stroke or something, about 13% of trauma like this to the brain can cause them and not everybody can recover from those - the treatment for _that_ wouldn't have been any easier.

 

 _'Why didn't I **fucking** spot this?' - _ of course he'd noticed the changes, the subtle, little ones that Beth, Jerry and maybe even Summer wouldn't have so readily spotted, but Rick did. Because he's Rick. Morty's speech had begun to slow down, which had helped his stutter a little funnily enough, and it wasn't very overt, but Rick  _knew his Morty -_ right down to the pitch and flow of his voice and it was irregular. He pinned it down to a lack of sleep which he could guiltily account for, and the added stress of his grades plummeting. He was probably just coming down with something, Rick assumed - and when he'd gone to bed mumbling something about a migraine instead of come directly to the garage like usual, he'd assumed he was correct. Morty's poor attention span could have been attributed to that too, Hell, it could have even been a migraine-induced case of aphasia which would have been easier for Rick to deal with. Five minutes - tops, before it became a serious problem.

 

It could have accounted for Morty's jumbled up behaviour and even poorer ability to listen that had been afflicting him the past few weeks, yeah Rick  _noticed_ but it hadn't been anything to write home about beyond attributing it to generally poor health that a few solid days of self-care couldn't fix. He even toned down the adventures and humoured Morty when it seemed like he was searching for a break without hurting his feelings or otherwise bothering him, hence his clumsy attempt to manipulate Rick into taking out Beth.

 

 _'Slowed speech is symptomatic of reduced processing time which can be attributed to a number of factors' -_ but Morty's problem-solving skills didn't seem too impaired on their last adventure, in fact, he seemed even more highly strung than usual, trying to erratically come up with solutions, so Rick too-quickly ruled out the idea of his grandson being depressed, or troubled by something they encountered in the galaxy. Rick usually credited himself with having a good sense about that so he knew what to erase, it's how he protected Morty from cracking under the pressure of the very adult issues and situations that Rick constantly exposed him to.

 

 _'It is not aphasia either, Morty's been bleeding from facial orifices,'_ Rick reminded himself, staring mutely at his grandson while the parents watched him quickly set up something to measure Morty's vitals - they were fine of course but it'd be irresponsible of him if he didn't.

 

"One of you should get Summer from school, it's probably spread around by now what's happened to Morty," said Rick blandly "-you're not gonna do me any favours getting under my feet," - they argued his points, of course, and he didn't stop working throughout, hooking the sleeping teenager up to a few strange cords which looked like they belonged more in a robot than a person. It isn't his fault though, it's not like Rick expected to be doing surgery today, and in truth he didn't want to. He could probably trust an alien doctor to remove a foreign presence, easily - but he isn't sure if Morty will necessarily wake up after the fact.

 

He's loathe to admit it, but he wants a second opinion from someone more qualified than the people who worked at Seattle General - and if it was what he suspected it was, he didn't want Beth or Jerry to be there.

 

"Alright ya little turd, you've got some answering to do when I'm finished with you," he mumbles, rolling up the sleeves to his lab-coat with a sense of quiet resolve.

 

* * *

 

 

Dr Glarcx is a doctor that achieved his medical degree from The School of Applied Biological Sciences in his home world of Arantzas-D4. A planet with a long, rich history of biological anomalies even with the current, known strings of twisted evolution that Rick had come across in his long spanning years of space and dimensional travel. It's no surprise that he picks what he thinks is the best in dealing with irregularity if he wants to trust any other opinion besides just his own. When Rick wants something, he's not beyond forcing his way towards it, and taking it for himself, so it should be equally unsurprising when he drags the good doctor straight from his ward to his garage. He's familiar with Rick, in the way that most people who regret meeting him are.

 

"Rick Sanchez, what have you  _done?"_ complete with a put-out sigh is the first thing to leave his lips.

 

He was once forced to keep Rick in his surgery due to the manipulation of the alien Hippocratic oath which bound his surgery to the rules of the old Vatican, or an embassy. Rick had picked the place on purpose knowing he needed to bunker down between running from the feds and getting home, so they wouldn't be able to capture him in his injured state. The lanky bastard evoked  _Sanctuarium ab laedendum Assequitur_ _-_ an ancient concept bound into the foundation blood of King Quarlor's Hospital, it meant  _sanctuary from harm._ Arantzas-D4 was technically a moon to a larger planet that warred constantly with it's twin, Verdis and Necturn, and as a result, the hospital had seen lifeforms that spent decades spilling each other's blood within the same ward. 

 

 _Katruan Feivn Liaucn Deyson da Ros_ \- the native language of Verdis and Necturn was emblazoned on a metal arc that hung above the doors to King Quarlor's Hospital - and under  _The Protection of Native Traditions Act of 1596 -_ even under the purview of the Galactic Federation at the time, under their own laws, they could not breach it. The gate had read a clear warning, and entering with hostile intent evoked the wrath of both planets that the moon shared, offering a grim warning to anybody even considering the notion.

 

_Katruan Feivn Liaucn Deyson da Ros - War Will Not Breach These Walls._

 

Rick had quite smugly tangled them within their own bureaucracy, and forced Glarcx to house a war criminal within his hospital, or a "rebel" - a warrior for freedom, depending on where you stood on the whole debate, or an indestructible force for anarchy. In the time that Dr Glarcx had known him, he couldn't really say for sure what exactly Rick was. Standing before him now though, pointing to a frail, wiry little excuse for a humanoid that narrowly shares some features of his - like the shoulder width to hip ratio and other loose, vague, genetic similarities, he seemed less like a war criminal and bit more like the desperate drunk that Glarcx had first taken in when his ship crash-landed into the garden of his facility.

 

"You must be desperate if you've gone all this way to bring me here," Dr Glarcx tilts his head - he's a strange thing to look at. An odd, purplish creature poured into a white Howie lab-coat much like his own, but unlike him, had pins littered down the collar that denoted his importance back on Arantzas-D4. His limbs are too long and his fingers far too precise, like narrow little scalpels in their own right, his legs possessing three different bends in them to indicate more than two pairs of kneecaps but an otherwise human appearance that looked _just odd enough_ with _just_ an irregular enough walk cycle as to trigger a feeling of uncanny valley when humans look at him.

 

"I need a second opinion," Rick bites out, ignoring the barb Dr Glarcx sends his way. "You're the best doctor in the galaxy for this sort of shit, so here you are," he snaps.

 

"Praise from Rick Sanchez? Somebody check the sky for flying grumpflorkians," Dr Glarcx snorted derisively, folding his awkwardly long arms across his chest and turning to the figure in the bed. Immediately, his eyes do a scan of him, taking measure of his height, weight and overall genetic makeup in all of a few moments. 

 

Unremarkable, Dr Glarcx thinks - doesn't even have any android additions to his body like Sanchez does.

 

"I assume from his bone structure and loose genetic similarities that he's related to you?" there's no use in fighting Rick, he won't be able to go back to Arantzas-D4 until he's done with him. Fighting him is impossible and fruitless, like trying to wage war against a God, there's no point really. Glarcx isn't even sure how the Federation honestly thought they ever had a chance to begin with. The doctor is smart enough to know to give in instantly, and it's why he doesn't fight Rick after being dragged from his brief moment of relaxation in his office.

 

"It's my grandson," he pinches the bridge of his nose in frustration "-there's something foreign oozing around his brain and it's not blood," he hands Dr Glarcx the primitive scans and it earns an amused little snort from the alien. It's just so - so old - to him, like handing somebody a Commodore 64 in the era of the Xbox and super computers.

 

He looks around and sees he's in a regular bedroom, hardly equipped for surgery, but Rick's surrounded himself with enough technology that he could probably make something work. It's not exactly the cleanest in terms of hospital regulations and codes but he must be desperate. If Glarcx truly has to do something operational with the grandson, he'd much prefer to have him portalled over to King Quarlor's Hospital, where it's sterile and there's even more resources. He says as much, but Rick isn't happy to move Morty yet again, looking around - there's more than enough supplies here and if he needs more, the doctor has no doubt Rick could make them or fetch them - and looking closely at the scans, he decides it's best to keep him here.

 

"Actually, you might be onto something," Dr Glarcx hums "-the damage is centred in the hippocampus region of the brain so - it's probably best if he's surrounded by things he can immediately recognise when he wakes up," he tilts his head to one side "-I'm going to need a closer look."

 

Rick barely hides a grimace.

 

"I know."

 

He turns away as the doctor opens his mouth, and an inordinately long, skinny, almost straw-like tongue slips its way out, and slips into Morty's ear.

 

_Gross. But hey - it works._

 

It's sensitive and more unobtrusive than an outright surgical cranial examination, and Glarcx's species produced a naturally sterile and utterly non-irritant, they could drain blood quite effortlessly just using their tongues if they desired. It was as creepy as it was fascinating, but couldn't solve things like ruptured vessels and abscesses and the like, it was only really good for drainage. He was searching for the strange, foreign growth after gently sapping at the blood which had spilled out where it shouldn't - he'd still need a surgical procedure, but a much lighter one, thanks to Dr Glarcx's very strange and unearthly methods.

 

"-Oh - that's--" Dr Glarcx falters as his tongue withdraws and he lets it flop lazily down his chin, it was now tipped with a strange, greenish substance. His eyes darken slowly - and Rick can practically see the cogs turning behind his eyes as he stares unblinkingly at the man, reaching the same conclusion that the scientist had suspected earlier.

 

A knot of dread forms in the bottom of Rick's stomach.

 

"Sanchez," - his tone is low, not quite dangerous - but close. It's not like he has any investment in Morty emotionally, but there's something viscerally that disgusts him when he detects the presence of _Amninectar_ \- or at least, some base form of it. He knows what it is, because his surgery is well stocked with different variations of the stuff. Its purified form is used to temporarily block immediately stressful memories and situations which were responsible for quicker blood circulation that caused quicker blood loss and shock, and not every life-form could take the standard A to Z of drugs that usually slow down heartbeats, so multiple measures need to be an option. There's a rule against using it on people too young though - it's goddamn dangerous - it's also, when used in excess, used to cause medically induced comas to prevent heavy cranial damage from occurring due to swelling.

 

It's just ethically all kinds of wrong that he's tasting unpurified Amninectar on his tongue,  _in Morty's brain -_ in a bloodstream, sure, but it's also in its raw form, in his mind. It's the equivalent of finding Gatorade on there, instead of drinking it and finding it in the stomach.

 

"Sanchez - why is there unpurified Amninectar on his  _brain -_ what have you being  _doing?!_ How - how does that even get there?"

 

Rick winces, and reaches for his flask again, mumbling in low tones knowing that Dr Glarcx will be able to hear him regardless, it is very rare that he ever feels scolded. This is one of those times. It's cemented for him in stone now - it might as well hang from his head in bright, blinking neon letter.  **"I Destroyed My Grandson Because I'm a Piece of Shit"** \- he blithely wondered how many, if any (and probably there were) Ricks on the central-finite curve had managed to fuck up their Mortys irreversibly. How many of them had just outright gone and  _fucked_ with their grandson's mind? He was the Rickest of the bunch, there's a chance it's just him - even if it's a small one, and damn if he doesn't feel like the biggest piece of crap when it hits him. All of this was his fault, and if he'd been just a smidgen more responsible, maybe the kid wouldn't have needed to have so many memories wiped in the first place. Fuck! He shouldn't have taken  _so many liberties_ in the first place, except that he's Rick Sanchez, and nobody ever tells him  _no._

 

Now he suffers for it.

 

"I...might have been erasing his memories a bit," at the look he gets, he suddenly feels a need to defend himself, unibrow setting into a heavy frown. Glarcx can't judge him, he doesn't  _know_ him, not really. And he certainly doesn't know his Morty! If that kid came up to him, eyes wide and wet with tears, kneading his jacket and choking that he wants to forget something, he'd like to see Glarcx try to say no. "-half the time he asks me to!".

 

Never mind why a small boy would want to erase whole memories willingly, Glarcx just coolly raises an eyebrow, picking on the man's words.

 

"Only half the time?" he gives a low cluck of disapproval from the back of his throat "-Naughty, naughty Sanchez," he chides, ignoring the twitch in Rick's eyes when he does that.

 

"The rest of the time I assume you do it anyway," he wrinkles his nose a bit as though remembering something particularly unpleasant about the man "-you always tend to just do what you want," he doesn't wait for a snarky rebuttal. There's a suffering little teenage humanoid that requires medical assistance, he can do that much. 

 

"External laser ray I assume? Since human brains don't natively produce that fluid," Rick just nods, grinding his teeth audibly.

 

"Well. I hope I shouldn't have to tell you this, since it should be obvious, but do that a few more times Sanchez, and your kid's gonna end up a vegetable."

 

He doesn't count on Beth having already gotten Summer, standing in the doorway silently - the expression that slowly drips onto her face - it speaks volumes of her fury.

 

Rick doesn't blame her.

 

* * *

 

 

Dr Glarcx had made quick work of Morty on a physical level, with Rick overseeing between arguing with Beth, anyway. Physically, Morty is going to be just fine - the blood is taken care of, the physical damage is being repaired, memorandum serum is being steadily pumped into the teenager to recover all of his lost bits and pieces, which Glarcx insisted on, because the fact they're missing is what's causing the amninectar to coagulate. Usually, it would disperse after use of the laser, but nobody had accounted for over five hundred uses of the laser over a long period of time, or that Morty would actively try to pick up the pieces of his memories when he realises he's missing something, no matter how clean-cut of a job Rick had done taking them away in the first place.

 

Summer slams her door shut, waiting for the adults to stop arguing so she can see her brother with some semblance of peace. She's fretting, she doesn't want Morty to suffer, even if physically he's okay and his vitals are fine now, nobody could wake him up. Nobody could account for the fact he'd wet himself either, beyond it being potentially a misfire of neurons due to the trauma that was happening, she was much more inclined to think it was something psychological. Not that either of them listened to Summer much, they barely listened to her anymore than they'd listened to Morty.

 

Rick can't remember the last time Beth got this angry over anything, bar him leaving in the first place. Snarling accusingly over her bottle of wine, finger shakily pointing at her father's ashen face, she all but screams. 

 

"You broke him, you fix him!" there's tears in her eyes and she is  _furious,_ moving her finger down to jab her father sharply in the chest. Jerry doesn't hold her back, because he's angry too, but he's too busy gnawing at his fingernails and occasionally shaking Morty's unconscious body, as though it would help somehow, because he can't just do  _nothing._

 

"B-Beth sweetie," there's that sneer again, disdain creeping into Rick's tone, he loves his daughter - but he can't stay blind to her lack of responsibility, if he has to face up to it, he's forcing everyone else too as well, even if he has to drag them kicking and screaming. "-Lets not forget all the times you and the family  _asked me_ to do it to Morty. Y-y-you think he wanted to forget all that shit? No, but he was so scared of ha--" he hiccups drunkenly, aiming it vaguely in her direction. "-hating you that he'd rather beg me to get rid of all the times you hurt 'im - least when I do it, I know I'm a piece of shit. I don't stand there a--all holier-than-thou like I didn't fuck up majorly,".

 

 _Like you're doing right now -_ is the silent implication.

 

Beth almost slaps him. Almost. Instead, she clenches her wine bottle until her knuckles change colour and she refuses to back down under Rick's withering gaze. Even if he's correct, she refuses to swallow that right now, she's still angry.

 

"A  _handful of times_ Dad! That doctor -  _thing! - "_ Beth snarls at Dr Glarcx, who remains nonplussed "-said you had to have done this over three hundred times  _at least._ And now Morty... _Won't. Wake. Up!"_

 

"Well duh, it's like you just pointed out, that means he has over three hundred memories and missing gaps to fill, his body is just coping with that, physically he's fine, so he'll probably wake up in like, a few days," Rick shrugs, the crisis is averted to him, but the shrug - that breaks Beth. She moves her hand forward and slaps it across to Rick, who grabs her wrist before it's anywhere close to leaving an impact. He knows that he deserves it, and he's honestly shell-shocked that Beth actually has a mental line that Rick is possible of crossing when it comes to him. He always suspected that honestly if he killed Morty on an adventure or something that even if she'd be mad and hurt, grieving and furious, she'd still take him back, and that suspicion had always secretly disgusted him.

 

Maybe he was wrong.

 

It seems like he was wrong a lot as of late.

 

Dr Glarcx chooses this moment to unhelpfully interject - since Rick's overconfidence is nice and all, soothing Jerry at least, in that Morty will wake up soon, but to the alien it seems like everybody in the room is vastly overestimating the ability of a fourteen year old boy to deal with a quarter of a lifetime's worth of blocked memories being force-fed to him at once.

 

"Maybe, maybe not," Dr Glarcx said with his own little shrug "-he's just a fourteen year old boy in Earth years, but I know if we did that in the Kramer-Flitty ward, that'd bring about a madness and coma. We usually put in long-term care programs and stretch this sort of thing out for a long period of time. The only reason we don't have that option now is because he was already comatose due to the bleed," - it was a luck game now.

 

That's not the answer any of them wanted to hear, and not one Rick planned to stand for.

 

 _'This is my fault,' -_ his gut clenches and the feeling of dread in the pit of his stomach just gets bigger and bigger, feeling the daggers from Beth's eyes, the resentment even from Jerry - somebody he didn't particularly care much for either way, so his opinion should have been worthless, yet it still got to him. Everything about this situation is pissing Rick off, from the unpredictability from the one thing he was sure was absolutely and utterly consistent in his life, the rightful blame he's receiving, the uncertainty of Morty's health, the blasé attitude of Glarcx whom he could not reasonably expect to care but goddammit it made him mad anyway. He wanted to vault himself into a puddle of booze and not come out, he wanted to numb himself from this overwhelming sensation of guilt.

 

He didn't know - despite making out like he knows everything about everything, Rick didn't  _know._

 

Rick lets go of Beth, who immediately jerks backwards away from him, jaw clenched tightly.

 

"I'm g--gon--gonna fix everything," he stutters out, though his eyes are hard and determined. "B-but y'know,  _Beth -_ none of you realised there was anything wrong with Morty either y'know,"  _even though I thought I knew what was wrong with him and brushed it off._

 

_Fuck._

Glarcx cuts in before another argument happens - these screaming humans are starting to give him a headache.

 

"And how, Sanchez, do you propose to wake up the Mortling? Unless you have some magical ability to enter the subconscious and help him digest his memories, I fail to see how you're going to do anything to help," he's not meaning to be condescending, he's honestly curious, and Rick is thankful for the change of subject, because Beth looks ready to scream at him again. He reaches effortlessly into his lab-coat, rooting around before withdrawing what looked like a very small, very unimpressive little microchip that had an even tinier LED light attached to signify when it's on or off.

 

"Uh, because I  _do,_ but magic ain't got shit to do with it son," Rick snorts, managing to be cocky even now, and holds up a dream-inceptor.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Comas are not quite the same as dreams, logically speaking. There's not really much supposed to be going on in the brain, but then again, everything about this situation defies convention and logic, including the substance being gently administered to Morty in an effort to make further repair on the memories missing that seemed to have a knock-on effect to his hippocampus. Morty's brain is active, which is another good - if irregular - sign, it's overly active in fact as a response to the memorandum serum. Everything is going as it should, aside from Morty being unable to wake up, that is.

 

Glarcx is the only person present in the room when Rick gently nestles the dream-inceptor into Morty's ear, his delicate fingers brushing across Morty's cheek as the boy remained blissfully catatonic. The doctor directed his attentions to the device measuring and keeping track of the vitals, or pretended to anyway, as he had a sharp sense that Rick would not appreciate having this moment watched and judged. Morty looks so tiny and delicate - like he has no idea how badly everybody around him is panicking. 

 

The guilt is starting to tighten around Rick's gut like a vice, no matter how he slices it - this is his fault, maybe not entirely, but the majority of the blame rests squarely on his shoulders. He doesn't have the option to simply "not think about it" - which is his go-to solution for things like this, because Morty is suffering. Rick remembers most, if not all, of the memories he's taken away, a vast amount were petty things, and some were displays of unremitting, guiltless cruelty on his part. He can't explain that to Morty - he can't even say sorry, but he can be there for him this time, when he suffers through them again, instead of just pointing and laughing.

 

Then there's some things which Rick has taken away for Morty's own good, things which don't bother him because he is calloused and well-worn when it comes to the depths of the multiverse's depravity, but his little grandson was not. There's situations that Rick has gotten them in, in the past, which have seriously endangered Morty in ways that really did scar the poor kid.

 

There's the massive, overwhelming pile of Morty's mistakes, the kind which eat a kid so highly strung by his own anxiety already that they eat him inside and out until removed - things which Rick tore into him for at the time. He's going to relive the "You're so fucking stupid Morty," speeches at least a dozen times. Rick has to be there to lessen the blow this time. It doesn't matter if they're genuinely stupid things anymore, he just wants Morty to be awake, and not terrifying everybody with the prospect that he wont. 

 

Lastly, there's things Rick's done - not just the petty mistakes and the cruel, cosmic pranks and drunken acts of nastiness, but things which genuinely made Morty think less of him, or hurt him too deeply for words. Rick has to be there - and so without another thought, he turns on the device, and slips blissfully into Morty's mind.

 

 

"Grandpa's comin' Morty," is the last thing Glarcx hears coming from Rick's lips, followed by the heavy thud of his body collapsing in a chair beside the bed.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 Rick isn't really sure what exactly he expected to find, Morty wasn't really anything like Mr Goldenfold. He couldn't use that man as a frame of reference for what to expect, but it's the only thing he really has, he hasn't actually used the inceptor on anybody else - because it was (quite childishly) created with the sole purpose of getting Morty an A in math class for that semester and that was it. He thinks of his grandson as relatively simple and not just in that he has low intelligence, because literally everybody does if he uses his own mind as a standard metric to hold others up too. No - he thinks it because Morty is just fourteen, and has a lot of growing left to do. Privately, he doesn't think he's nearly as stupid as his daughter and her husband assume he is, Morty isn't the quickest study - but even just recently he's displayed the ability to disarm Rick's neutrino bombs. Shitty ones, as he tends to make them when he's drunk, but functional ones too - he might not understand how it all works, but he understands how things fit together, that's how he knows how to take them apart in order, otherwise he'd be blown to smithereens by now.

 

He thought that he might immediately fall into a memory, and that it would be a bit like watching a film, only he'd be standing in it - like a ghost, or something. Instead, he's greeted by what he can only call Morty's Mindscape - and it is absurdly normal looking. Well, mundane - really, and Hell if that wasn't Morty all over. It's just a wide stretch of trees and a pathway forward, with no way back - normal, and boring. Mundane little Morty - it's one of the things Rick actually liked about him, he was far more sensible than most brats his age and even if his anxiety-ridden fits about Rick's behaviours and some of the alien things they come across annoyed him sometimes, it was nice having somebody he could impress.

 

 _I've been doing that a lot less recently -_ Rick muses, his mind unwittingly flashing to that horrid affair with the Vindicators for a moment. He didn't expect it to cut him so deeply that Morty would still be like every other kid his age in the galaxy and moon over hero icons, it hurt him deeply in his chest that, despite all of his memory wipes and do-overs, that  _Grandpa_ wasn't his hero, after all of the things he'd shown him and done with him. He destroyed the kinds of enemies the Vindicator's faced between breakfast and dinner and wouldn't bat an eye, yet Morty idolised  _them._

 

 _Then I destroyed them -_ and didn't make Morty feel any better about it.

 

Rick doesn't regret destroying them, but if Morty didn't think he was petty after doing that, then he definitely will after he gets all of his memories back. The thought kind of stings, and Rick doesn't like the feeling, especially as he can't get drunk to avoid it when he's incepted into Morty's mind.

 

"Moooooortyyyyyy!" He isn't sure if he should just blindly walk forwards or if he should be trying to yell for him and find him in his dream, the way they had found Goldenfold in his plane seat - it's worth a shot. It's the logical guess. He's in his brain so - surely the kid must know he's there, right? Is this some kind of game, or are his thoughts so disordered that he has to find Morty the hard way?

 

When he's met with nothing but an echo, Rick frowns.

 

"Okay, hard way it is,"

 

He walks forward, mostly because he has no other option. If he tries to go backwards, he's met with a strange, infinite darkness and he's certain that if he tumbles in it, finding his way back out might be impossible. In truth, Rick's gone in absolutely blind and without a manual, only having vague notions of what to do and what to expect from his foray into Goldenfold's mind and his own theories surrounding use of the inceptor. He knows that there is a very real possibility of getting trapped in Morty's subconsciousness though, which is essentially "if you die here, you may as well be dead out there," - so he has to be careful. He's willingly entered a space where he has very little control now.

 

The scientist looks out across the pathway - it's the only clear route there is besides getting lost in the trees and Rick has this nasty feeling that it'd be like getting lost in a looping video game texture, and that he may not be able to get out otherwise. It's dark too, really, really dark. There isn't a single lamp post or form of light anywhere besides tiny little dots of yellow between the leaves of trees, flying in and out silently. 

 

Fireflies - lighting up the only way to go like a string of lanterns on Chinese New Year - he'd almost think it was beautiful if there wasn't a strange, grim sense of foreboding the deeper he went. 

 

"Mooooooorrrrrtyyyyy!" he tries again, even though it's a bit fruitless.

 

A game plan probably would have been smart. He's been inside of his own mind, Rick realises - back when he was in jail and the Feds were trying to get his formula for interdimensional space travel. He'd manifested a Shoneys, because that's a place that Rick felt quite happy in, and would be content to whittle away an afternoon eating and for once, not thinking very hard. By that logic, shouldn't Morty be manifesting somewhere he's been? Rick doesn't think he's ever taken Morty to a place like this, and the deeper he walks down the path, the more the trees begin to arc inwards, gradually covering up the night sky that Morty must have created for himself - with nebula drifting through the darkness instead of regular clouds.

 

It seems all of the space travel must be having some sort of lasting, non-negative effect on the kid, and it's enough to get Rick's lips to twitch slightly, he'd smile if the situation wasn't so dire - because now the trees were beginning to ache and contort, stretching quite uncomfortably like they'd been bent and destroyed by a giant or a hurricane. The fireflies began to cease too - and he was yet to come across any sign of this ending, or any hint of what exactly this was supposed to mean. It had to mean something. 

 

Usually, Rick shat on the field of psychology, as he thought it was the art of stating the obvious but with longer words and abuse of the word "theory" - and that it masqueraded as a field of scientific study, but right now, he felt about ready to eat those words. He kind of wished he'd cracked open a psychology book now, instead of throwing them all away.

 

There's still the idea that some part of Morty can see what he's doing, even if he can't respond to Rick for whatever reason, so he mumbles as though the kid can hear him. He just might - he's basically the God of this world - the All-Maker, even if he has very little control while comatose.

 

"I'm gonna find you Morty," he sighed in exasperation, pushing a stray branch out of the way with an irritated scowl. He doesn't have the option of  _not_ finding Morty. He would have taken a moment to appreciate the surprising beauty that lurked in his usually unimpressive grandson's mind, if he wasn't so preoccupied with  _finding him._ Though, he can't escape the thought that the gradual, environmental chaos was probably a bad sign, as were the lack of fireflies - or rather, the pile of dead bugs which he noticed littering the floor - and when he looked behind him, the ones he'd walked past had died too.

 

_'Okay, weird. Does that mean you don't want me to go back, Morty?'_

 

He keeps mindlessly walking, walking and walking until the stretch finally ends - and he can see a small building - at first he thought it might be Harry Hepson High School, but it's not. It's much too tiny. Still, he's relieved to see something other than trees and dead bugs, and it's nice being able to see the space-sky again. Maybe Morty's in this building? Or his consciousness is? Hiding in the back, in the disordered, chaotic bit? It's already vastly different from Rick's own experience, it's not his Shoneys - that's for sure. It's a weird little building with a rainbow painted from one window to the other.

 

It's dark, but when Rick walks closer, he can see chalk imprints on the black, endless grounds which mimicked a small hopscotch. He doesn't recognise the place at all - but it's the only building he can see, so without hesitation, he enters.

 

 _'Why are you leading me here, Morty?'_ because he has to be, he obviously isn't doing it consciously, but some part of him is guiding him through all of these motions, and the difference between being in an actively memory-pumped comatose mind as opposed to the dreaming one would be fascinating as a point of study, if so much didn't ride tremendously on Rick being able to navigate it, and save his grandson.

 

"Morty, if you're in here, _it's time to wake up,_ "

 

It's unlikely to work - he has a lot of shit to get through memory-wise, but hell, it was worth a shot.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Starting second year of university, plus 10+ societies and 3+ extra curricular positions on top of that so slower updates after this week probably, but worry not, I aim to have some level of consistency here.
> 
> Song of the chapter - "Vagabond" - by the Misterwives
> 
> edit: Author has made a tumblr for their writings and as a way to communicate with you better. It's over yonder:
> 
> www.haephestuscrexwritings.tumblr.com 
> 
> wouldn't advise if you don't want spoiler talk but I generally plan to put it under a cut anyway n tag it


	4. Mortynight at the Electric

 

Rick needs to get a feel for what’s happening around him, it’s unusual for him to feel out of his depth for so long. For some reason, being in the mind of his grandson was a lot more troubling than it should have been. It’s the complete insecurity he has – he supposes – in that he has no idea what he’s doing, and no direction. If not for the fact Rick was experienced in waking up and having no idea where the Hell he is, he might have been a bit more panicked.

 

As it stands, he’s just confused.

 

The building is unremarkable in every way, again, a bit like Morty on the surface. He’s not surprised, it might just be the representation of how utterly mundane he is, but Rick’s just guessing.

 

“Ah _-Fuck!_ " he nearly trips, and just catches himself and quickly looks down to see what he’s tripped on. He’s met with a strangely disconcerting sight. Worst part is – he can’t find a logical reason why, but the randomness of it is bothering him. It’s just a pair of shoes. Tiny little shoes – and they’re missing their owner. They’re not the only pair either. There is a healthy smattering of all kinds of tiny shoes that Rick couldn’t even fit half of a hand in.

 

 _“Mortyyyyyy,”_ he drags out his grandson’s name, feeling well… not on edge, but apprehensive. He usually thrives on a lack of predictability for his thrills in life, but something about it being a by-product of Morty’s mind just has him in a perpetual state of worry, where he’s trying to figure out what sort of damage it’s indicative of. Rick runs a hand down the walls and feels just how narrow they are, with bits of non-descript paper hung to the edge, dripping in glitter. Every door he walks past, he gives a try, but finds them locked – like they’re just painted on. At this point, he's feeling a little bit like a test lab rat that's been dropped into a maze with no promise of reward, no hint of purpose, not even the scent of a treat to go by to follow his nose to a certain path. He's trying doors and it's only because he's  _Rick_ that he's not wriggling them in an abject panic when he gets to the seventh one down the line and still finds it impossible to enter.

 

_‘What the actual hell, Morty?’_

 

It forces Rick to take a linear path – which seemed to be the going trend in Morty’s mind so far. There’s one source of light in the grey, colourless seeming building, blasting out brightly from an open door. Instinctively, he heads towards it like a moth to flame.

 

He figures out that he’s in an elementary school pretty quickly, but due to his profound absence in Morty’s early years and the Smith family in general, he doesn’t actually recognise the building straight away. If he’d been around, he’d have known what it was right off the bat. Hell, if he’d been a good grandfather, he’d have probably held his hand and dropped Morty and Summer off here a few times. Rick feels a little creepy, to be honest – being the long-limbed, stalking adult in a room with tiny little desks made for tiny little people. He had no place here, and even though it was just a memory, it filled him with a visceral sense of not belonging. He enters the bright room though – because it’s his only option, and frowns.

 

 _‘Okay Morty, you’re not even following your own rules anymore’_ – the windows are beaming in pure daylight, even though when Rick goes outside, they’re in the vacuum of space, bathed in permanent night. He couldn’t say he didn’t welcome the colour though, he’d felt like the odd piece in a monochrome film once the fireflies had died. At least things looked a little more real here. Too real, almost - like if he stands in the ray of light he might actually feel some warmth and there's an atmosphere of genuine serenity as Rick picks up on even the minutia of dancing dust motes trembling in the air, creating a simple but gorgeous backspatter effect that would make photographers croon. Inside the room are the litter of tiny desks and chairs, poorly drawn crayon pictures littering the walls and a long, hanging banner made-out of tiny multicoloured children’s handprints.

 

It was the quintessential elementary school. There’s a banner scrolling across the room above a blackboard displaying the alphabet in upper and lowercase, along with numbers up to twenty. If Rick had to guess, it was probably a first grader classroom. The peace and serenity becomes disrupted, or rather, filled up with strings of cheers and the sounds of stampeding feet in the distance. Instinctively, Rick reaches into his lab coat, looking for a weapon, only to pause - and realise that in this world, he has none. No weapon, no flask, no string of emergency solutions and importantly, no way back besides the  _kick_ button he'd installed into the inceptor, that in theory should force him awake in a state of emergency when his brain activity becomes too low to be standard and indicates he might get trapped there. He's got no intention of leaving without Morty, so the "leave" button will remain untouched until he gets what he wants.

 

Rick doesn't actually want to have to test if the Kick button works though. He just wants to find the consciousness, and get home, even if it means he has to go through Morty's mind projecting everything so abstractly, almost purposefully infuriatingly. He draws his shoulders up to his ears in surprise, and slight twitchiness when he feels something brush past his legs, before relaxing when he sees it's just some kids. That would make sense, wouldn't it? An elementary school would have kids in it, though he cant say much of what was happening followed a rhyme or reason, because he still wasn't sure why he'd run into so many pairs of little shoes when he'd come in. Even kids just don't leave on the floor, so he figured that (like a lot of things here) - it was probably symbolic of something, but of what, Rick had no earthly idea.

 

Relief sweeps through him when he spots a familiar colour sequence of yellow and blue, complete with even messier brown curls. He doesn’t need to look for longer than half a second to know who it is.

 

“Morty!” his eyes flit to him first, but he’s met with no reaction. The class fills up with previously unseen life, pattering into the room and walking past Rick as though he isn’t even a presence. He’s immediately struck by how tiny his grandson is – was – and is quite confused. Why was Morty manifesting this? He’d never taken a memory this far back from him, there’d never been a need.

 

Super-genius or not, he’s stumped. Rick's understanding of the situation, as limited as it was in this particular case - would be that he'd be helping Morty digest the slew of memories, after finding wherever his consciousness was holed up. Instead, he's tossed into a strange, forever warping reality that seems to have its own rules, and there's no conscious representation of Morty to communicate with  _anywhere,_ apart from perhaps, this manifestation of him, but he didn't even respond. He wonders, briefly, if he has to intervene in an obstructive, intrusive manner in the same way he created a lookalike bomb made out of aeroplane issue food in Goldenfold's dream. A thing to consider though, was how utterly tits up everything that followed was, once Goldenfold remained in control. Here he's not even certain if Morty has any control. New game, new rules - and nobody's been given the handbook.

 

He even wonders what the extent of his ability to interact with a comatose mindscape is like, the children didn't walk  _through_ him after all, they walked around him like he was a passing presence that didn't even bare noting - like he was a lamp post or something.

 

_'Could I break this place?'_

 

And more importantly, if he does, what does that do to Morty's psyche? He disregards the thought - intellectual curiosity could take a backseat. If he was in any mind but Morty's - he'd have taken it as a challenge, but right now, he's in a sensitive sort of position and he was not ready to gamble an already compromised mind. Not after getting him into this in the first place. He decides that if nobody if paying him any attention, he'll walk around some - maybe there's a teacher figure around? No reason why one shouldn't manifest. His Shoneys had representations of waitresses and serving staff. There's too many internal questions, and too few answers for Rick's liking. 

 

He walks between two rows of desks, and settles near where Morty is sat. Rick does his damn best not to feel strange about it, or dare he think it -  _emotional -_ but it's been a long, long time since he's seen a baby Morty. All are born at the same time sans a complete difference in fundamental universe rules, and so the only things he has are little memories of him - a baby he hadn't actually been there for. He'd always been this odd, nebulous presence who would quite literally portal into his life, and gaze lovingly over his crib, before disappearing quietly into the night, after seeing just how much his baby boy had grown - thinking of the day he'd be old enough to go on adventures. How he hoped his lack of presence would lessen the chance of Beth's Sanchez genetics from making her terrible parent. Naturally, that wasn't the only reason or even the most important one. Rick was a selfish bastard, and he wouldn't pretend that him leaving was any act of martyrdom. It had been selfishness, carelessness, and purposeful self-destruction. Rick hadn't been there because he hadn't wanted to be there, it was that simple.

 

Plus, he wasn't exactly great when he _was_ around, but it seemed no matter what he did, whether he was or wasn't there, Beth came out the way that she did as an inevitability and while they varied in temperament across dimensions, it seemed like some part of Morty's life would be doomed to be effected by her parenting in some way shape or form.  

 

_'Ah, so small...'_

 

There's an uncomfortable knot of warmth in his chest when he looks at how small Morty is - he could only be what, six, maybe seven? His face is utterly impassive but - there's a misplaced sense of joy that curdles inside of him when he sees a manifestation of small, young Morty - _baby boy -_ still innocent, happy even. He doubted Morty would remember all of those times he'd portalled in when he was very, very young - and the accuracy of this manifestation was probably a mixture of broken up memories and seeing his own baby pictures. It wouldn't surprise, or really hurt Rick if the kid didn't remember him. If he could even interact with the little thing - he doesn't respond to Rick's presence. Maybe that's why he doesn't? He doesn't know who Rick is, at this stage in his life, so why  _should_ a little Morty acknowledge him? He can't really blame the kid for not being able to remember far enough back into his life, to when Rick would phase into his room once every blue moon and gently pick him up out of his crib, allowing himself a half-second of humanity, before disappearing into intergalactic wastelands. Rick can't even remember being a baby, and he's a super genius, so he tells himself not to feel a bit stung - but emotions don't really listen to reason in the first place. Not often.

 

Little Morty seems happy enough though, he's just folding little pieces of paper on his own, making tiny little cranes. There's an instruction book, but a cursory glance tells him that it's an all pictures-and-diagrams kind of book, and when there are words, they're written largely, and picked simply. Little Morty doesn't seem to need it though - he takes one look and he's mimicking the visual aid quite easily. He'd picked different colour craft paper too, he seemed to have had several tries at making a complicated flower and was making a small mess in his art class, but he doesn't stop until he's done it. There's a pile of six or seven screwed up pieces of pink paper, because it had been the hardest one to do, but he's still not giving up. Nobody is talking to him though - Rick notes, so he just throws himself into his little task like it's the most important thing in the world.

 

When he's finished, there's a pink lotus, and a red tulip, and a yellow crane - Rick feels the smile on his face before his mind tells him that he's doing it. 

 

_'I've never seen this.'_

 

 _You were never there -_ the snide part of him replies.

 

It _feels_ like a real memory, just from the kind of sensory details there are here, Rick can't really explain it but there's a subtle difference in things that are imagined and things that have their origins in something real. He thinks there is, anyway.  He's so engrossed in the surprising amount of grace a tiny fat-fingered child has that he doesn't notice the kindly teacher step out of a storage room. He doesn't seem to notice Rick either, or if he does, than he doesn't seem to care - and simply walks to Morty's desk, as though noticing nobody was chattering to him in the way that the other kids seemed engaged with each other.

 

He's a soft, gentle looking young man, the kind who looked like he'd only just completed his teaching qualification and still had all the excitement of youth ahead of him before the system bludgeoned it out. He's dressed in a neat, but colourful Hawaiian long-sleeve and has his hair back in a neat ponytail, but you can tell just from looking that he's gentle, fainting-couch sort. The kind who went to boy scouts and had a father who was a Church deacon. An all in all "good egg" - the absolute antithesis to Rick in every kind of way.

 

"Heya sport," he speaks in a smooth, honeyed tone which, unlike a lot of adults fresh into teaching that age group, he manages not to sound patronising, and his smile reaches all the way up to his eyes. 

 

"H-H-Hi," even little baby Morty manages to be awkward, and the thought earns a small chuckle out of Rick - but even his  _voice_ is unbroken and delicate, exactly as it would have been at that age. It's an incredible manifestation, if he's honest with himself, and a testament to the odd beauty he was discovering in his grandson's mind, whose more often written off as slow-witted, and not capable of something so detailed as this. Rick's guilty of thinking that too, but for once, he's never been so glad to be proven wrong. 

 

"Those look really good, who're you making them for?" everyone in class seemed to be making something to take home, but Morty just shrinks shyly into his seat, before picking up each origami piece delicately instead of pointing at it. Unlike a lot of kids his age, he's capable of great feats of gentleness, he was never that child that stroked dogs too hard, or picked pets up by the throat. He was -  _good God -_ absolutely antithetical to what Beth was like at that age. She was a force to be reckoned with, abrasive without meaning to be, and if she hurt something, it was a 50/50 tossup on whether she meant to do it or not.

 

Little Morty picks up the pink lotus first and mumbles "Summer," - then the tulip "-Momma," and lastly, the crane with a proud little grin "Daddy." 

 

"They'll love it," the teacher assures "-and, break will be soon, you can give Summer hers first if you like," he says gently, but Morty shrinks down further in his seat, causing a soft frown from Rick.

 

"It's okay, you don't have to - you can stay here with me again if you want too, that's fine too,"

 

Little Morty smiles shyly in thanks, and Rick finds himself again, wondering why this is manifesting -  _why -_ until an absolutely horrible thought settles in his stomach. Maybe - maybe Morty is struggling so much with the onslaught of memories that he's regressing. While his psychology knowledge was limited, it was more than most, and it was a very real possibility. The only way he could tell was if Morty's consciousness actually responded to him, instead of chucking him in the middle of this mess. In a somewhat panicky move, he turns to the blackboard and grabs a piece of chalk, maybe if he disturbs the background enough, it'll change something in a meaningful way.

 

That's the only guess he's got.

 

Rick scrawls on the blackboard from top to bottom in the largest handwriting he can manage until it's filled edge to edge.

 

_**WAKE UP** _

 

He throws the chalk back down and looks over his shoulder back to Morty - yeah, it's a little on the nose, but it seems talking and just screaming out his name wasn't working, so he had to disturb the scenery, he had to  _force_ Morty to acknowledge him, he had to. He had to. Hell, he didn't even know if he could talk to these things and that they really were hearing him and just deigning not to respond, if he disturbed the world around him, well - it was a dangerous move but - it's the only one that he's got. They couldn't ignore that, could they?

 

And they did not.

 

The walls of the bright, colourful classroom seemed to suddenly drain and match the monochrome that had haunted the building when Rick first entered it and made his way down the long classroom corridors. The sunlight that beamed brightly through the windows like a halogen light at full capacity suddenly drowned themselves in darkness, the windows revealing the black vacuum of space once more. The suddenness of it was enough to make Rick clutch his head and close his eyes, struggling to take in such a rapid environmental change with no warning. It was so disorienting that if he had the ability to expel fluid, he would have thrown up on the spot from the extremity of it. 

 

It takes him a moment to realise, but the force of it has thrown off his centre of gravity, and he's fallen onto his backside on the floor, clutching at his head. When he opens his eyes, all of the little desks are empty, the happy little bundle of elementary schoolers were utterly absent, and not a fraction of their mess was left behind. Rick couldn't help but feel like he'd done something wrong, but at least he'd done...  _something._ Action was better than inaction, but he couldn't dispel the sinking feeling in his gut then the room became robbed of all of it's atmosphere and life. It was like when he opened up the hatch to his ship, when all of the oxygen just escapes and devours everything into the immensity of space. Not even a single speck of dustlight remains, and the low hum of noise for children trying to chatter quietly to each other has silenced itself in one sudden moment.

 

Rick looks around him, and sees no children filling the classroom anymore. The walls look like they've been bleached grey too, he's the only thing that seems to stand out -  and he cannot help but hear Glarcx's put out, muted tones in the back of his head when his hands press against the cool ground, his chiding, accusatory tone fitting all too well with the ruined scene.

 

 _Rick Sanchez, what have you **done?**_ \- worst part is, this time he's not even really sure what the answer is, or if his presence and actions in Morty's psyche were doing more harm than good. There's very few things that frighten Rick, but the utter loss of control in the face of uncertainty is definitely one of them.

 

He stood up shakily, and found that Morty was still in his seat, but there is no origami on his table. Instead, in his little hands, is a sloppily written card. It's covered in glitter and multicoloured fingerprints - the pinnacle of first grader art, and smiley faces and about every little thing he could stick on it from the Crafts box. His eyes linger on the poor attempt at staying within the lines where little Morty has attempted to colour in some bubble lettering with purple crayola. It takes all of his willpower not to reach forward and grab it out of his hands to sate his curiosity and open it, because little Morty keeps it closed, his eyes staring blankly and downcast.

 

The card reads  _GET WELL SOON,_ and little Morty isn't moving.

 

Everybody has left, but the kid remains mutely in his seat, his stubby little fingers shaking as he delicately holds the piece of folded card in his hands - his eyes are watering - but the tears don't fall - he just stares vacantly at his desk. He looks like he's been hit by a train. It's not an expression that sits well on the face of someone that young, but especially not Morty, especially not  _his_ little Morty. Rick looks around him urgently for a moment, looking for a sign of the teacher from earlier, or anything else - before deciding his own course of action is to try to talk to M-- this  _version_ of Morty. His hands fly down onto the boy's desk into his immediate line of sight as Rick crouches down slightly to level his face with the small child.

 

"M-Morty," his tone more pleading than he's used to hearing come out of his own mouth - the child's head snaps up to attention, as though finally seeing him instead of seeing through him. He visibly recoils, face still filled with unshed tears as he pulls the card tightly to his chest, breathing heavily. It had all the urgency and demand that he usually did when he'd tumble into Morty's bedroom and drag him out by the leg for adventure, he'd ask - but he was never really waiting for an answer, he always just took him regardless, but it lacked the alcoholic tinge and the aggression. The desperation was disgustingly palpable, and it seemed to make little Morty recoil further.

 

"Listen - you, you've got to wake up - alright? You're asleep Morty - and you're--you're scaring everybody," said Rick, looking severely at the small child.

 

The child was silent, and chewed nervously on his lip, still downcast.

 

"Morty?"

 

His words, just as shy and stammering as they had been with the teacher almost sear through Rick like a knife despite his collected demeanour.

 

"I'm not 'spos t-to talk to - to strangers."

 

 _Shit, God - what the hell was he supposed to do with this?_ This couldn't be Morty's consciousness, yet he's manifesting himself like this for a reason and none of it is making any kind of sense. He's acting like he doesn't know Rick, and hell, maybe he's so damaged he's forgotten, the nectar had been centred around the hippocampus, hadn't it? Somehow, the idea of - not losing Morty, not having die just, having him alive but forgetting Rick - that was a bitter concept to try to swallow. He tells himself he hasn't been right about anything thus far, and there was no reason to assume he'd suddenly be correct now. He'd incorrectly assessed Morty's illness after all. Still, little Morty looking up at him with such wide, glassy but apprehensive eyes - like he was totally unfamiliar to him, that stung.

 

"Morty, I'm your Grandpa - _Rick,_ " but his eyes didn't light up in recognition, little Morty just kept looking at him - like he was a strange, abstract concept. The thing that makes Rick strangely uneasy though is the tiny little smile that Morty gives him, backing out of his chair with a dull scrape as it skidded over the carpet and he stood on his short legs. He was absolutely tiny even for his age and barely reached above Rick's knees, he just shrugged a little bit after Rick proclaimed to be his grandpa. He gave him a look of blinding trust, and, forgetting for a moment that this is something an older, fully functioning Morty had created, he felt heat pass through his skin when the child tentatively grabs at the material of his lab coat, where his arm has sagged down before tenderly curling around his wrist.

 

His heart almost stops - for a split second it feels like his Morty, his Morty but  _little -_ and it takes all of his will not to listen to this instinctive urge to bend down and pick him up. He caused enough damage by writing on a board, hadn't he?

 

"Ohhh," Little Morty says quietly, nodding his head. "-That's good. Momma said not to take the bus 'n she'd get me but I think she forgot," he points to the closest classroom window, as though gesturing the vast emptiness that Rick knows awaits them outside.

 

For some reason, little Morty's immediate trust of him makes him uneasy, if Morty is manifesting a younger self that doesn't know him, he's not  _supposed_ to just trust any random adult that comes to him and claims to be a relative, or blindly attach themselves to their person. Rick comforts himself with the idea that it's a sign that Morty still knows who he is, deep down, and that explains why this manifestation trusts him so readily, because he's not sure if he can stomach the implications of something else.

 

"Did she make you come get me?"

 

Rick isn't sure what he's supposed to do, so he just rolls with it - when all else fails, roll with the punches and hope you can stay alive long enough to have a plan. That's usually what Rick ends up doing, and it hasn't steered him too wrong yet.

 

"Yeah, I'm here to make you wake up M-Morty," he says, as firmly as he can manage, but his unibrow is still set to a heavy frown - there's something not right about this, but he can't quite articulate what and it's frustrating him. The child doesn't register what Rick seems to mean whenever he mentions waking up, and taking a glance at the blackboard he'd scrawled on earlier, he notices that it's utterly blank now, all signs of his scrawls completely erased and reset with the room. He looks up at Rick shyly from under his lashes, sniffling heavy and dispelling whatever tears were lingering in his eyes.

 

"I have to - I-I have - to give this - to the.. customadian--" he butchers the word horribly, but Rick figures he means custodian, and continues to frown as little Morty clings to the card he made. He doesn't like not taking the lead, but being that he has no idea what he's doing, Rick lets the young Morty talk, and dictate what happens next. "He's gonna give it to Mr Jones," says little Morty sagely - like he should automatically know who that is. Rick takes an educated guess, and assumes it to be the gentle man who had manifested earlier and appeared to be teaching the class. He doesn't bother asking why the custodian would do this for him, teaching staff always had strange relationships - like everybody knew each other. That's why you could never trust a teacher, if you told one of them one thing, you may as well have called a meeting with the entire teaching body and blasted out your secrets over a megaphone. Rick.... Rick didn't have a good experience with teachers.

 

Then it hits him.

 

Morty's teacher had gotten sick. Morty's first grade teacher had gotten sick and for some reason Morty remembered it, and he's manifesting it - but fuck -  _why?!_

 

"C-c-can we go there first?" he looks wide-eyed at Rick, who nods stiffly, like he's just laying back and observing an experiment despite being an active participant.

 

"But then you have to wake up, alright?"  no response.

 

Looking a bit embarrassed, little Morty looks at his feet as his fingers slide down Rick's wrist until his stubby fingers tangle with Rick's long, spidering ones. It's enough to make his heart stop for a moment, because it chills him to the bone just how  _real_ it feels, as though it's taking every sensory ability Rick has and is casually fucking with it, forcing him to feel things that aren't actually there. 

 

"It's through the Scary Door," his tone warps into one of childish distaste, but Rick doesn't get the change to question it before he's being pulled in one direction, causing him to yelp.

 

_'What the fuck is the Scary Door, Morty?'_

 

Young Morty tugs him into the corridor, and Rick finds himself breaking out into a run - for a kid with such stubby legs, he clears the seemingly endless stretch of corridor and demands the old man do the same, and doesn't stop until they reach a huge set of red double doors, with a plaque emblazoned on it, simply reading  _Custodian's Room._ Rick motions to go ahead and try the door first, since this manifestation of Morty seems to find it frightening, he puts his hands on the brass knob and feels them warm, before pulling them open in one abrupt motion - his hands aren't on there for long - but the warmth turns to  _burningly hot_ in .2 seconds. Rick's snarling, even though his sense of pain is a lot less than if he'd been awake and using his actual body - this still managed to  _hurt -_ tickling his pain receptors. He had no doubt his hands were fine in the waking world, but looking down at his, he saw them red-raw and achingly blistered.

 

A thick cloud of grey began to wash over Rick, and he realises smoke is pouring out of the open doors - he catches sight of little Morty, but before he can do anything, he's plunging into the darkness. Forgetting again in his dizziness that this was not  _really_ Morty - a scream leaves Rick's throat before he can stop it.

 

"Morty - _don't!_ " 

 

The child disappears into the darkness, the sound of his footsteps going down an endless staircase are overwhelmed by the sounds of crackling fire.

 

Rick doesn't even think about it when he springs into action, shoving an arm over his nose before remembering he couldn't die of smoke inhalation -  _not here -_ but he hardly breaks pause, and runs himself into the darkness, casing himself in smoke and headed feet-first into flames. He couldn't  _not find_ Morty.

 

He'd do anything for his Morty.

 

_Grandpa's coming._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jesus this one was tougher to write for some reason, I'd like to formally apologise for how fuck-all happens here but I really wanted to cement one of Morty's earliest life experiences/memories before we got any deeper. I hope I haven't disappointed any of you - thanks for sticking around ;;A;; I endeavour for the next chapter to be better! BIG plans, ya'll got a big storm comin'
> 
> Song of the chapter - "The High," by Kat Dahlia


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